Video of Woman Being Dragged Into Arkansas Tornado Viewed 1M Times

Video footage of a woman being pulled out of a building by a tornado has been viewed more than 920,000 times on Twitter as of 6:45 a.m. ET on Monday, after a series of deadly storms ripped through the south and Midwest over the weekend.

The clip is one of several shared online from personal experiences of a forceful tornado that meteorologists believe traveled around 32 miles across Little Rock, Arkansas on Friday. As well as bringing widespread damage, the storms left a trail of power outages and overturned vehicles.

Potentially dozens of tornadoes took the lives of at least 26 people, according to the Associated Press, including four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas. Another woman was suspected to have been killed by a tornado in Madison County.

In the state's capital, Little Rock, officials said over 2,600 buildings were in the path of tornadoes. In the Little Rock area, one person was killed and a further 50 were said to be injured, some critically.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has yet to assess all of the tornadoes, but classified the one that passed through Little Rock on Friday as an EF-3 with estimated peak winds of 165 miles per hour and a maximum width of 600 yards. It said the last tornado rated as highly to hit the area was in January 1999.

EF-3 is the third highest rating on the Enhanced Fujita scale used to grade the wind speed of tornadoes, based on the damage they cause.

NWS Little Rock announced a Tornado Emergency on Friday afternoon, and on Sunday thanked colleagues in Memphis for assuming control of issuing warnings while its team were forced to shelter from the storm. It said the tornado that had gone through Wynne was also at least an EF-3.

In the footage, posted by multiple users on Twitter, a woman holding the camera can be seen beckoning to a man to come inside what appears to be a dental clinic to the northwest of the city. She continues to watch the tornado approach from inside a glass door. "Oh my God," the woman says.

Debris then begins to audibly hit the side of the building as the woman and man attempt to hold the doors closed against the wind. The glass in the door then smashes and the woman appears to be pulled out into the swirling debris, before the camera is picked up by the man.

The footage then shows people sheltering in the bathroom of the building, while leaves and debris are visible on the hallway floor. "I was in it," the woman says, before noting that their "cars are gone."

The NWS said that the weather had proven to be a "nightmare" for central parts of Arkansas. James Bryant, a meteorologist for local network KATV, reported that following the twister, a street sign had been found 13 miles from the road it was supposed to mark.

On Friday, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency over the thunderstorms and tornadoes, which the declaration said was warranted due to the "dangers, hardships, and suffering throughout the state."

On Sunday morning, U.S. President Joe Biden approved the declaration and ordered federal aid to the state, as well as grants for temporary housing and home repairs. In a statement, he said: "There's nothing we can do to heal the hole left in the hearts of far too many families who lost loved ones this weekend, but we will be there every step of the way as they rebuild and recover."

The NWS expects the poor weather in the region to continue this week, writing on Sunday that "another round of strong to severe thunderstorms" will arrive on Tuesday afternoon and continue into Wednesday morning. It warned residents to "prepare for another possible round of severe weather."