Tony Blair in tornado scare as wild storm rakes southern United States

They knew they had a weather situation when the window panes began to shatter

Former Presidents Clinton and Bush and Tony Blair at the ceremony before the storm struck (AP)

Tony Blair was hurried out of an educational ceremony in the United States along with two former presidents when a wild storm hit, smashing windows and prompting a tornado warning.

Officials in Little Rock, Arkansas, confirmed on Friday that Mr Blair as well as former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had to be rushed out of the gymnasium of a Little Rock high school on Thursday night when the frightening weather system struck.

“Your weather is interesting,“ the former Prime Minister offered during a visit to the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock on Friday, eliciting widespread mirth. He said he had been asked on Thursday night whether he had ever seen a tornado in England.

“We have the odd gust of wind, but that was quite something last night,” Mr Blair remarked.

No tornadoes were reported but the storm, which hit wide areas of both Arkansas and Oklahoma, wreaked serious damage, blowing over a lorry on a nearby highway, toppling scores of trees, downing power lines and leaving roughly 200,000 people without power.

The three former leaders were in Little Rock to attend a graduation ceremony for an educational program called Presidential Leadership Scholars.

It became apparent that the weather might constitute a serious threat to the former leaders when the glass in the school windows began to shatter. As sirens sounded, everyone attending was moved to the basement of the school. Messrs Blair, Clinton and Bush were also hustled into a separate beneath-ground room, officials said, where they remained until the worst of it had passed.

The leadership programme is a joint initiative of the presidential libraries of Bush, Clinton and former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson. It offers scholarships to elite students committed to sharing “a commitment to helping solve society’s greatest challenges,” according to its website.

Before the powerful storm was over, some areas had been soaked with two inches of rain. Flash floods were reported in several areas including one that saw a post lorry swamped halfway to its roof with water. In some spots, wind gusts got close to hurricane force, weather reporters said.

“We're still kind of rocking and rolling across Arkansas [and] Tennessee into Alabama into the evening,” Kait Parker, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said later in the evening.