Storm Continues across the midwest

(CNN)    Large swaths of the upper Mississippi Valley braced Sunday evening for severe weather, part of a system that earlier struck a hospital, shredded buildings, blew tractor trailers off highways and killed five people.

  Tornado watches were in effect through 11 p.m. CT (midnight ET) in 25 counties in Minnesota, 15 counties in Wisconsin and 14 counties in Iowa, according to the National Weather Service. Such a watch extended through midnight in as many as 55 counties in Arkansas, 27 in Missouri and 10 in Illinois.

  Cities under these alerts include St. Louis, Missouri; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota.

  "Strong winds near the surface and aloft will support fast-moving supercell thunderstorms that will be capable of producing tornadoes, some potentially strong, as well as damaging winds and large hail," the service's Storm Prediction Center said in its severe weather outlook.

  As of 7 p.m. CT, the center had received 10 reports of tornadoes on Sunday. Most of those were in Nebraska, though three twisters were reported to have touched down between 4 and 5:30 p.m. in Lyon and McLeod counties in Minnesota.

  Those numbers, thus far, are below the 122 tornado reports from Saturday.

  Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback told CNN that "97 tornadoes touched down" in his state, a figure not yet confirmed by the National Weather Service.

  Oklahoma was also hard-hit, with Gov. Mary Fallin declaring a state of emergency in 12 counties in order to help expedite resources.

  All the known deaths tied to the weekend storm were in Woodward, a small northern Oklahoma city of about 12,000 people about 85 miles west of Enid.

  Another 29 in Woodward were treated for injuries, said Matt Lehenbauer, the city's director of emergency management.

  "This thing comes in the middle of the night. It caught us asleep, mostly," Hill told CNN.

  In addition to leveling 89 homes and 13 businesses, the storm "took out" the transmitter for the public siren and tornado notification system, and "we lost our manual override" when the electricity was knocked out, City Manager Alan Riffel said.

  Given that and timing of the tornado -- after midnight, and after other severe weather had barreled through -- Fallin said the human cost could have been even worse.

  "It's remarkable that we didn't have more loss of life in Woodward," she told reporters late Sunday afternoon.

  Officials credited working early warning systems elsewhere in the region with preventing more fatalities.

  Advisories from the system were issued two days in advance, rather than just a matter of hours, and were "remarkably accurate," said Brownback. "People took it very seriously."

  In southwest Iowa, officials evacuated the entire population -- roughly 300 people -- of the town of Thurman after a suspected tornado struck Saturday, damaging or destroying three out of every four homes.

  By early Sunday morning, many Thurman residents who took up temporary shelter at a high school in nearby Tabor were again in the path of a storm that spawned suspected tornadoes in neighboring Kansas.