Tornado sirens have pierced the night skies of Kansas City on Saturday night, interrupting Scotland’s first World Cup football match in 28 years for fans. Wails heard across the city heralded a chilling warning to locals and World Cup tourists alike: duck for cover, with dangerous and wild weather imminent.Fans that may have hoped to spend their Saturday at the FIFA Fan Festival in Kansas City had their plans cut short, with the venue closed by 5pm after warnings of severe of winds of up to 80 mph coming through from America’s weather bureau.
The whole metro city area remained under a tornado watch warnings until 11pm local time, but for football fans the damage had already been done. Mass power outages interrupted streams of the Scotland game and festivities came to abrupt ends across the state capital of Missouri, with tourists and locals alike told to shelter in place.
The US National Weather Service has now confirmed two tornadoes touched down in the Kansas City area by the just before 9pm, with more than 68,000 homes now without power as a result. First responders are now racing to make neighbourhoods safe with reports of downed power lines and fallen trees across the city.
While fans may have missed seeing Scotland take down Haiti for a win due to power outrages cutting them off mid-game, the Scots weren’t alone in having their style cramped on Saturday night. England have again run into strife, with the team arriving in Kansas City shortly before the weather made a turn for the worse.
Thomas Tuchel’s England squad were in the middle of a community training session when the first tornado sirens sounded at 5pm, cutting the public training session short with Swope Soccer Village as a result. A crowd of 700-or-so fans were sent home and the English squad scrambled indoors, as digital and phone alerts issued advice to “shelter in a sturdy building, away from windows” as “flying debris may be deadly”.
The weather is just the latest disruption to a so-far bumpy start to the 2026 FIFA World Cup for England, with the Three Lions finding themselves to be the victims of theft last Friday. Their base was raided of its training equipment, including boots and official tournament balls, with the stolen goods since recovered. Tuchel’s England will open their World Cup campaign on Wednesday with a game against Croatia in Texas, before facing off against Ghana and Panama in the Group L schedule.