Twisters stun Dallas area
Violent storms stall air traffic in region. Despite crushed buildings, flipped vehicles, Dallas County reports few injuries, no deaths.
Violent tornadoes pummeled towns around Dallas on Tuesday, flattening homes, flipping tractor-trailers and grounding flights, but few injuries and no deaths were reported.
Starting about 1:30 p.m., severe storms caught residents by surprise and continued for more than two hours, the National Weather Service said. Preliminary estimates show six to 12 twisters touched down in North Texas, senior meteorologist Eric Martello said. The number will be confirmed today after crews survey the area.
In suburban Dallas, Lancaster police officer Paul Beck said 10 people were injured, two severely. Three people were injured in Arlington, including two nursing home residents, Assistant Fire Chief Jim Self said.
Lancaster, 20 miles south of Dallas, was the worst-hit city, absorbing “extensive damage,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who heads the County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
In the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, a Speedy Oil Change and Tune-up shop was destroyed, and other buildings were damaged.
Residents were warned early Tuesday of the possibility of severe weather, but the bad weather spun off tornadoes with such ferocity that they caught most everyone by surprise, Jenkins said. “The people who got hit first got little warning,” he said.
Local TV showed 14,000pound tractor-trailers in Dallas caught in wind funnels and being flicked high into the air like matchsticks.
Social media sites also lit up during the storm, as users reported scrambling to bathrooms and basements for safety. One woman described riding out the storm in a food cooler at a Costco store with dozens of other customers.
American Airlines took the rare step of shutting down all flights at Dallas/ Fort Worth International Airport, airline spokesman Tim Smith said. Workers had to inspect 68 American Airline planes and 33 American Eagle planes for hail damage.
DFW Airport spokesman David Magana said more than 110 planes were damaged by hail, but he didn’t say which airlines.
Overall, 370 departures were canceled — nearly half of all departures on a typical day, Smith said. More delays and cancellations are likely today. “The variable we really don’t know is how fast we can get the inspections done and, second of all, what level of potential damage we find that must be repaired,” Smith said.
Severe thunderstorms are forecast today for the lower Mississippi Valley and Ten- nessee Valley, Weather Channel meteorologist Kevin Roth said. The states at greatest risk for severe storms, according to the Storm Prediction Center, include Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and western Tennessee. Large hail and strong winds are the greatest threat, but tornadoes are also possible.
Tuesday’s storms occurred when a high-level trough of cold air collided with surface warm air that had been floating over Texas from the Gulf of Mexico for days, said John Nielsen-gammon, Texas’ state climatologist.
Forecasters predicted severe weather for that area, but the region wasn’t prepared for the intensity and severity of the storms, Nielsen-gammon said.
“They’ve always known the risk of tornado but they’re generally not the super-intense ones,” NielsenGammon said.
The area is in the southern rim of “Tornado Alley” and has had its share of destructive twisters in the past, he said. A massive tornado that hit Waco in 1953, killing 114 and injuring 597, still holds the state record for deadliest tornado, according to the National Weather Service.
“Along the list of worst case scenarios for severe weather is for an (EF5) tornado to hit Dallas,” NielsenGammon said. “It’s the largest metropolitan area that has the great significant risk for that type of tornado.”