Severe storms hammer Texas
100 buildings hit; central California braces for floods
A CPS Energy transmission tower was damaged Monday in San Antonio. At least three tornadoes ripped through parts of San Antonio overnight, causing extensive damage. Authorities reported only minor injuries.
SAN ANTONIO — Severe storms pushed at least three tornadoes through parts of San Antonio overnight, ripping the roofs off homes and damaging dozens of other houses and apartments yet causing only minor injuries, authorities said Monday.
Elsewhere, downpours swelled creeks and rivers in California, threatening to cause even more flooding in the already soggy region.
A National Weather Service survey team confirmed that a tornado with winds hitting 105 mph struck a residential area about 5 miles north of downtown San Antonio around midnight. Of the 43 homes damaged in the area, three collapsed, said San Antonio Fire Department spokesman Woody Woodward.
Resident Lucy Duncan said she peered out the window of her home as the storm ramped up and saw only a white mist. She said she and her husband quickly rounded up their children and hid under a mattress in an interior hallway — just before the roof was torn from their home.
“We didn’t know what was going on at that point. We started to hear the electricity popping and we thought the house had caught fire,” she told KENSTV of San Antonio.
Eight buildings in a nearby apartment complex were severely damaged, with some roofs stripped from the buildings and a couple of buildings partially collapsed, Woodward said.
Five minor injuries were reported in the area. Crews estimating the damage said preliminary reports indicate that the tornado left a 4½-mile track.
Another tornado briefly touched down about 5 miles northeast of San Antonio International Airport. Woodward had no reports of damage from that area, but photos show steel towers carrying high-voltage electric transmission lines toppled or bent in half.
Citywide, more than 100 structures were damaged by storms, Woodward said.
Another 30 to 40 homes were damaged in two adjoining subdivisions about 10 miles northeast of downtown, said Bexar County spokesman Monica Ramos. The National Weather Service said the area was hit by a weak tornado, with winds of up to 70 mph, along a roughly 1½-mile track.
Northeast of Austin, meanwhile, a dozen auto-carrier cars of a Union Pacific freight train were blown from their track near the tiny town of Thrall, where at least two tornadoes touched down early Monday, according to Williamson County officials. The county said about 20 homes were damaged, and the fire chief said several barns and outbuildings also were damaged.
Power failures in the San Antonio area peaked at more than 47,000 customers early Monday, most of them in the area hit by the tornadoes, but were down to 6,000 by late Monday afternoon, according to CPS Energy, the utility serving the area. At least one high-voltage transmission tower in northeastern San Antonio was bent in half.
Weather Service meteorologist Eric Platt said survey teams were inspecting those and other areas during the day Monday. The storms had moved southeast by midday, producing steady rain in the area but no severe weather.
In central California on Monday, evacuations were ordered and flash-flood warnings were issued elsewhere as creeks and rivers swelled to dangerous levels.
People living along a section of the Carmel River in Monterey County were told to leave, as were those in a neighborhood of Salinas near Santa Rita Creek and a few people in rural Royal Oaks, where a mudslide encroached on a home. No injuries were reported. The Monterey County sheriff’s office sent Humvees out to help with the evacuations.
The Carmel River, which has flooded several times in the past month, was expected to rise to nearly 11 feet by today, which would be a moderate flood stage, while the Salinas River near Spreckels was forecast to approach the moderate flood stage of 26 feet by tonight, which could inundate the Monterey-Salinas Highway, the Monterey Herald reported.
The Big Sur River reached its moderate flood stage of 10 feet Monday morning and was expected to crest at 12 feet, the paper reported.
“The ground is saturated, and all rainfall at this point is increasing not only the pooling along the lower-lying elevations but also the river levels,” said Eric Ulwelling, a division chief with the Monterey County Regional Fire District.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.