Aki Nace has been a web producer for CBS Minnesota since 2019. She covers breaking news and makes short-form documentary films. Video captured children on a New Richmond school bus watching the tornado in the distance. A fast-acting school bus driver took the students, as well as kids on another bus, to his shed to ride out the storm.

Mid-May is living up to its reputation for severe weather as an active weather pattern brings the threat of strong tornadoes, damaging hail and intense, destructive wind gusts over multiple days.

At least 27 people were reported dead across several states in an expansive outbreak of severe weather from the Heartland to the East Coast -- with more potentially powerful storms in the forecast for Saturday.