A fallen tree rests atop a crushed pickup truck after a tornado moved through Caulfield, Mo. Storms swept through southern Missouri around dawn Thursday, damaging homes and businesses and killing at least one person.

Caulfield, Mo. ? A tornado killed a 7-year-old girl and obliterated her family’s mobile home early Thursday when a storm moved through the remote Ozark hills of southern Missouri just before dawn.

The twister, described by witnesses as a fat black column that cut a 15-mile tear across rural Howell County before 7 a.m., destroyed a gas station, damaged homes, toppled trees and power lines and trapped a school bus on a dirt road. Sheriff Robbie Crites said it looked like the damage came from one twister that jumped from spot to spot.

Crites identified the victim as Elizabeth Croney, who was killed when the tornado hit their mobile home in a wooded area 16 miles southwest of West Plains. Her mother, Tamera, father, Jay, and brothers Austin, 8, and Anthony, 10, were injured. Crites said no other injuries were reported in the county.

A neighbor less than a mile from the Croneys heard the tornado pass as she took refuge in a bathroom.

“It sounded like gravel and rocks being thrown against the house. It was a roaring noise,” said Fran Meek, 63, whose two-story white farmhouse was untouched, although the wind knocked down a huge oak tree just feet from her front porch.

Fallen power lines and limbs on the dirt road outside her house trapped a school bus on its morning rounds, which had to wait for emergency crews to clear the road, Meek said.

“We were so lucky,” she said.

The site of the Croney’s mobile home, about 12 miles northeast of Caulfield, was devastated. Only cinderblocks remained where the trailer had stood. A large silvery piece of siding hung from a tree about 50 feet away, but the only other pieces of the mobile home still visible were shreds of insulation.

Several relatives scoured the woods for possessions Thursday afternoon. The site had been a salvage yard, and car parts, metal and other scrap covered the woods. An old school bus was blown into trees nearly 100 feet from where it had been parked.

“We’ve found some pictures and this and that. I’m picking up whatever looks important,” said Kermit Collins, 42, a cousin.

“I don’t believe they had any warning. The way I heard it, Jay was just getting dressed for work,” Collins said.

It took paramedics about an hour to reach the home, and they had to use chain saws to cut through wooded debris blocking the road, Crites said.

In nearby Caulfield, Rick Jarvis, 48, said he heard the tornado rip through the gas station he owns next to his home, which suffered just minor damage.

“It sounded like a herd of horses tearing up stuff. When I came out it was done,” said Jarvis, who owns Jarvis Station on U.S. 160 in Caulfield.

The twister ripped off the station’s roof, back wall and garage and tore up the signs and pavilion over the pumps.

Carmen Cenkush said she pulled off the road after seeing a tornado while on her way to work as a supervisor at the Cloud Nine Ranch Club in Caulfield. “It just went by. I mean, it was fast; it just went by,” Cenkush said.

The burst of tornadic activity was part of a larger line of thunder and snowstorms that stretched from Minnesota to Louisiana.

In northern Missouri, heavy snow forced the closure of Interstate 29 leading into Iowa, and Mike July with the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill said that part of the state could get up to 7 inches of snow.

The tornadic activity is unusual for this time of year, July said, “but it’s not unheard of.”

July said the storms were caused when the jet stream and warm, strong winds from the south intersected with a cold front over east-central Kansas.

Late Wednesday, a tornado touched down in a field near Adrian, south of Kansas City, authorities said. Damage near the Bates County town appeared limited to a destroyed outbuilding and a barn that lost its tin roof.

A separate storm moved through Johnson and Pettis counties just east of Kansas City, threatening Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster.

But the Johnson County sheriff’s department said it did not appear to sustain any damage.

The line of storms moved through eastern Kansas Wednesday night, packing several tornadoes, hail and heavy rain that caused property damage and injuries in several counties.

Linn County, Kan., Sheriff Marvin Stites said a tornado in a rural part of the county caused minor injuries and destroyed at least two houses.