The death toll has jumped to 12 in the aftermath of a swarm of destructive twisters that tore through the Midwest, killing seven adults and two children in Oklahoma and causing three deaths in Missouri blamed on flooding.

Floodwaters also proved deadly in Oklahoma, where a 4-year-old girl died after she was swept away while taking shelter with her family in a ditch, according to police.

It is unclear whether the girl is one of the nine people who died as five tornadoes — one a half-mile wide — struck the Oklahoma City area Friday evening, terrorizing communities already battered by deadly storms this spring.

The Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner told NBC News seven adults and two children are confirmed dead, including a mother and her small child. 

The medical examiner said that five of the nine dead had been positively identified and called on the public's help to identify the others. "If someone is missing a loved one from last night’s tornado, we would encourage them to contact our office at 405-239-7141," said Amy Elliott, of the medical examiner's office.

Hospitals in Oklahoma City reported 104 injuries, including five critical patients.

At least five people killed were in vehicles and may have been trying to flee as dark clouds gathered and warning sirens wailed, authorities said. 

Marcus Jolly, 32, of El Reno told The Oklahoman newspaper the scene along Interstate 40 "was a war zone. There were semis turned over and skeletons of buildings remaining.”

The twisters came just 11 days after a monster tornado left 24 dead in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, where power outages were reported Friday.

Mark Wiley, meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s southern region headquarters in Fort Worth, said early Saturday that there had been five confirmed tornadoes in the Oklahoma City area on Friday and one in the Tulsa area early Saturday.

A total of 12 tornadoes hit Missouri and Illinois around St. Louis, where “numerous homes” were damaged. Wiley did not have any information about casualties there. Two twisters touched down briefly in North Dakota, but did not do any damage.

The Oklahoma City area “definitely” experienced the worst of the bad weather, Wiley said, with wind gusts of up to 90 mph, baseball-sized hail and extensive flooding.

“We have several reports of water going into homes and dozens of people having to be rescued on the streets, especially along Interstate 40,” Wiley said. “It was not a good night to be in the Oklahoma City area.”

For Saturday, Wiley said the storm was moving toward Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and East Texas, but did not “look as severe as yesterday.”

The worry now turns to flash flooding. Wiley said about 6 to 8 inches of rain had fallen in 12 hours between 7 p.m. Friday and 7 a.m. CT Saturday. The Weather Channel reported that May 2013 is the wettest May on record in Oklahoma City.

Friday, the terror came from tornadoes boasting baseball-sized hail and winds so strong they tossed tractor-trailers off the interstate. Meteorologists said the storm's fury didn't match that of the tornado that struck Moore on May 20 but dumped around 8 inches of rain on the area.

An SUV used by Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Bettes and a crew of storm trackers was thrown 200 yards by one tornado near Oklahoma City suburb El Reno. The vehicle tumbled about eight times and came to rest in a field, Bettes said. Some members of the crew suffered minor injuries, and the vehicle was destroyed.

"That was the scariest moment of my life," Bettes said. "I saw my life flash before my eyes."

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Betsy Randolph said the woman and baby were killed when the SUV they were in overturned on Interstate 40 between El Reno and Yukon.

Many of the injured were hurt in accidents along Interstates 35 and 40 west of the city, where at least three semi-trailer rigs were overturned after the biggest tornado touched down near El Reno, authorities said.

Bart Kuester, 50, a truck driver from Wisconsin, said he was driving along Interstate 35 past Moore when he realized a dangerous storm was approaching. 

"I heard the sirens going off and I could see it coming," he told The Associated Press. Kuester said the interstate was flooded and jammed with people trying to outrun the storm. 

"Everyone was leaving. ... Just because that one that hit Moore was so fresh in their memory," he said.

Authorities said some of the worst damage on Friday was from flooding around El Reno and Yukon and the danger continued into Saturday.

The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings for parts of Oklahoma early Saturday.

There were also flash flood warnings in place for parts of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas and  Kansas.

On Friday, one tornado turned south from Oklahoma City and then toward the suburb of Moore, which was hit by a devastating twister on May 20 that killed 24 people and injured hundreds of others.

“I think we are still a little shaken by what happened in Moore. We are still burying children and victims, so our emotions are still strong," Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett told Reuters.

Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency.

"This has been a very large storm that hit a lot of communities," she told KFOR. She said she had heard from at least 30 fellow governors offering assistance.

At Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City, where winds hit 71 mph, all flights were canceled and about 1,000 travelers were herded underground, where they were told to put their hands on their heads. The airport reopened Saturday morning, but all morning departures were canceled.

Tornado warnings — meaning a funnel cloud that could become a tornado had been spotted in the area — were in effect much of the day for numerous counties in Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Forecasters sounded the alarm that much of the Midwest — already pummeled by a week of tornadoes and flooded with drenching rains — was facing another round of violent weather overnight and into the weekend.

Observers at Tinker Air Force Base reported a tornado on the ground near the base southwest of Oklahoma City. In Norman, home to the University of Oklahoma, a tornado touched down near Norman North High School and Norman Regional Hospital.

Buildings at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport were damaged by tornadoes with debris strewn across the runway. The airport was closed because of the damage, but re-opened just before midnight, the airport said in a statement.

Another tornado touched down Friday night 7 miles northeast of Moscow Mills, Mo., about 50 miles northwest of St. Louis. In St. Charles County, 24 houses were severely damaged or destroyed, said Mike O'Connell, communications director for the Missouri Department of Public Safety.

The National Weather Service evacuated its St. Louis office as tornado warnings were issued for north and northeastern St. Louis and surrounding counties.

Janet Shamlian and Aaron Marmelstein of NBC News, Mike Bettes of The Weather Channel, and Reuters contributed to this report. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

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Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

Bill Waugh / Reuters

Leah Hill, of Shawnee, Okla., is hugged by a friend as they look through Hill's scattered belongings from her home which was destroyed by a tornado, west of Shawnee, on May 19.

Launch slideshow

A vast area of the central U.S. was warned to prepare for storms on Monday, after tornadoes killed one and injured 21 in Oklahoma and also hit Iowa and Kansas.

“After over 300 reports of severe weather on Sunday, another round of dangerous severe weather is expected Monday with the greatest threat once again in the southern Plains targeting Oklahoma and parts of Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas,” the National Weather Service said. “However, severe weather is possible much further north towards Chicago and Madison as well."

The weather service issued maps showing the risk of severe storms and tornadoes.

A trailer park near Oklahoma City was turned into “splinters and rubble,” weather.com reported, as multiple twisters sent people running for cover along a 100-mile corridor.

James Hoke, who lives with his wife and two children in the Steelman Estates Mobile Home Park in Shawnee, Okla., told the Associated Press that they went into their storm cellar as the storm approached. When they came out, their mobile home had vanished.  "It took a dead hit," Hoke said.

Shalyn Phillips / TVNweather.com

A tornado is captured on camera near Viola, Kansas, on Sunday.

Read more from weather.com

"You can see where there's absolutely nothing, then there are places where you have mobile home frames on top of each other, debris piled up," Pottawatomie County Sheriff Mike Booth told the AP. "It looks like there's been heavy equipment in there on a demolition tour.

"It's pretty bad. It's pretty much wiped out," he added.

Elsewhere In Oklahoma, tornadoes were also reported at Edmond, Arcadia and near Wellston to the north and northeast of Oklahoma City, weather.com said.

Don Lynch, of Pottawaomie County Sheriff’s Office, said a 79-year-old man had been killed.

Twenty-one people across the state were injured, according to Keli Cain, an Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman.

The Norman, Oklahoma, office posted a Twitter alert warning of a tornado about to strike Pink, a town not far from Shawnee, at around 6:15 p.m. local time (7:15 p.m. ET).

"Large tornado west of Pink!" the post read. "Take cover RIGHT NOW in Pink! DO NOT WAIT!"

"You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter," it added. "Complete destruction of neighborhoods, businesses and vehicles will occur. Flying debris will be deadly to people and animals."

Randy Grau told weather.com of the moment he realized it was time to take cover in his Edmond home. He said he looked out a window as the weather worsened and believed he saw a flock of birds heading down the street.

"Then I realized it was swirling debris. That's when we shut the door of the safe room," said Grau, adding that he, his wife and two children remained in the room for 10 minutes.

The storm prompted an unusually blunt warning from the central region of the National Weather Service, which covers 14 states.

Oklahoma’s Governor Mary Fallin on Sunday declared a State of Emergency for 16 Oklahoma counties because of tornadoes, severe storms, straight-line winds and flooding.

"Our hearts and prayers are with those Oklahomans who have been affected by today's severe weather," Fallin said in a statement.

Carla Tollett, an information officer for St. Anthony Shawnee Hospital, said it was treating one patient who was in a critical condition and had also seen 10 other less seriously injured people.

Various power companies reported more than 57,000 outages related to the storms.

In Wichita, Kansas, a tornado touched down near Mid-Continent Airport shortly before 4 p.m., weather.com reported. Thousands of homes and businesses lost power, but the twister missed the most populated areas of the city.

Sedgwick County Emergency Management Director Randy Duncan told weather.com there were no reports of fatalities or injuries in Kansas.

In Iowa, two tornadoes were reported touching down on Sunday night -- one near Huxley, about 20 miles north of Des Moines, and one in Grundy County, northeast of Des Moines.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Chris O'meara / AP, file

This Nov. 28, 2012, file photo shows a customer at a 7-Eleven convenience store with a Powerball ticket in Tampa, Fla.

A lucky winner could take home one of Powerball's largest jackpots on Wednesday night as the prize rose to an estimated $360 million dollars.

That makes it the third largest Powerball jackpot in at least a decade. Lottery officials have said that such stratospheric payouts will become more common as a result of a redesign last year. Those changes were intended to produce bigger jackpots faster, and raised the price of a ticket to $2.

“It usually took a handful of months, if not several months, for a jackpot to reach this large amount,” Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer told the Associated Press. “Now it’s achieving that within a handful of weeks. I think the redesign is achieving exactly what we had wanted it to achieve, which is the bigger, faster-growing jackpot.”

Powerball tickets are sold in 43 states. The biggest Powerball jackpot ever totaled $587.5 million and was split between two tickets on Nov. 28. New Jersey resident Pedro Quezada won the fourth largest Powerball prize ever in March, taking home a $338 million jackpot.

While odds of getting rich quick remain slim, more players are likely to take home a smaller prize by matching fewer numbers. And for those who miss tonight's jackpot can take consolation: the Mega Millions jackpot rolled over to $190 million Tuesday night. The next drawing of that game comes Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The "Field of Dreams," a nearly 200-acre parcel of Iowa land made famous in the 1989 Kevin Costner film of the same name, will live on and give young people a lesson in life.

An investment group led by Oak Lawn, Iowa-based couple Denise and Mark Stillman closed the deal last week after more than two and a half years.

Denise Stillman on Wednesday recalled the moment she told her husband they should buy the property.

"[It was] over pizza by a swimming pool the night that he told me it was for sale. I said we should build a Cooperstown facility like that at the 'Field of Dreams' movie site," she recalled.

More stories from NBC Chicago

In the future, the site will be a sprawling complex built specifically for youth sports, including 24 baseball diamonds and 60 clubhouses.

"We're going to do things like build a summer camp where kids from the inner city came come to Iowa and learn about how to be a great human being through sports," she added.

Costner's 'favorite place on Earth'
There are some eerie coincidences between the film and the site's real-life purchase.

"We've actually talked about the similarity between the movie and real life except the tables are turned in the genders. The wife is that one that's proverbially the crazy one," Stillman said with a laugh.

She said she knew convincing her husband wouldn't be difficult, recalling their early days together in college at Bradley University.

"['Field of Dreams'] came out on tape and we watched it in the dorm and he cried, so I thought he was pretty OK," she said.

Stillman also has the support of actor Kevin Costner. She said the star lauded her effort and thanked her for keeping the dream alive.

"He just chuckled and said, 'I'm so glad that someone is saving that. It's my favorite place on Earth,'" Stillman said.

The first phase of the $40 million project should be complete in the spring of 2014. Stillman said youth baseball teams from as far away as California and Florida are already signed up to compete in tournaments.

EVANSDALE, Iowa -- The families of two young cousins missing for five months still were hoping the girls would come home, maybe even for Christmas, until the sad news arrived that two bodies had been found.

Autopsies by the state medical examiner's office are under way, but the remains are believed to be those of Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins, who were 10 and 8 when they vanished July 13 while riding their bicycles, Black Hawk County sheriff's Capt. Rick Abben said. 

"This 100 percent blindsided us and it absolutely did them as well," said Sara Curl, a friend of the girls' families and organizer of several community events to support them. 

She said the families were spending time with each other Thursday trying to cope with the news. The Collins family put up a tree and decorated it for Elizabeth, she said. 

Curl helped put together a vigil for the girls Thursday night, one of many community activities that will be needed to help people heal in the days ahead, she said. 

"I think everybody just needed to be together," she said. "Everybody was just wandering around going about their day not knowing how to handle things." 

The vigil was held around a Christmas tree set up to honor the girls — with the hope they would be home for Christmas to see it — said Tammy Marvets, whose husband, Randy, came up with the idea. She said her 7-year-old son went to school with Elizabeth and rode the same bus. 

Charlie Neibergall / AP

Kelly Borel, of Waterloo, Iowa, puts an ornament on a tree during a vigil for missing Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins.

"He's pretty upset. He says, 'Mom, I just want to cry.' I said, 'It's OK to cry, honey,'" Marvets said. 

Hunters found the bodies Wednesday in a wildlife area in northeastern Iowa, about 25 miles from Evansdale where the girls were last seen. Authorities found their bikes and a purse near a recreational lake in the city, and their disappearance sparked a massive search and kidnapping investigation involving the FBI, state and local police. 

Abben said Thursday at a news conference that investigators are "confident" the bodies are those of Lyric and Elizabeth, based on evidence found at the scene and a preliminary investigation. He noted that the bodies are small in stature and authorities "have no one else that's missing in this area." 

Abben said investigators were leaning toward reclassifying the case as a homicide investigation but would wait for the results of the autopsies before proceeding. He declined to say whether the bodies had been concealed or how long investigators thought they had been there. Relatives have not gone to see the bodies, and "there's no reason for them to do so," Abben said. 

Officers from several agencies scoured fields, woods and ditches near the Seven Bridges Wildlife Area for any possible evidence in the case. Deer hunters apparently stumbled on the remains Wednesday in the secluded area, which is intersected by the Wapsipinicon River and is a popular spot for hunting and fishing. 

Abben said investigators would continue combing the area for clues for several days and the park would remain closed to the public until at least Monday. "We will gather whatever is out there," he said. 

The news of the girls' likely deaths hit hard throughout northeastern Iowa, which had rallied behind them and their families in the five months since they disappeared. Some residents in Evansdale, which is 90 miles northeast of Des Moines, had been holding out hope that they would be found alive. 

"We are all grieving. We hurt for the families, and believe me it touches the community deeply because it is a small community," said Jeff Rasanen, pastor of the Faith Assembly of God Church in Evansdale. "It's a sad time. We were just praying for a much better outcome." 

In a posting on her Facebook page Thursday, Heather Collins, Elizabeth's mother, said it was not the outcome the family wanted but now "we know our girls are dancing up with our savior." Collins thanked the community for an outpouring of support. 

Charlie Neibergall / AP

Micayla Weber, of Waterloo, Iowa, holds a candle during a vigil for missing cousins Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins.

When Zuhra Hodzic, 25, of Waterloo, saw that Facebook message, she was heartbroken. Hodzic was a volunteer on searches for the girls and other community activities. 

"You're left with a blank," she said searching for the words and fighting back tears. "It's heartbreaking. It's devastating." 

For her and many others at the vigil Thursday, the focus turns now to finding who is responsible. 

"Our community deserves justice, and I hope our FBI agents and cops and everybody involved gets for us what we deserve and that's justice for the whole family and all of us," she said. 

At the girls' schools, additional counselors were available Thursday for students and others, according to Sharon Miller, the Waterloo schools spokeswoman. Lyric would have been in fifth grade at Kingsley elementary in Waterloo and Elizabeth would have been in fourth grade at Poyner school in Evansdale. 

The two were being watched by their grandmother at Collins' home in Evansdale when they went for a bike ride on that summer afternoon. Surveillance footage and witnesses have confirmed that they were riding nearby. Hours later, after they didn't return, relatives reported the girls missing. A firefighter soon found their bikes near Meyers Lake, and a search that involved hundreds of volunteers and several police agencies ensued. 

An FBI dive team brought in special equipment to search the lake days later, and the case was reclassified as an abduction after no sign of the girls emerged. Months passed — as did each girl's birthday — without any news as police chased thousands of tips and explored theories about what could have happened. Volunteers held prayer vigils and hung pictures of the girls. An anonymous donor last week pledged $100,000 for information leading to their return and the conviction of those responsible for their disappearance, on top of the $50,000 authorities had announced. 

Authorities had asked hunters to look for the girls in remote woods and fields this fall. 

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