Texas was rocked by a line of severe thunderstorms Friday night into Saturday.
High winds, heavy rain, and lightning strikes have left more than one hundred thousand customers without power in the greater Houston area early Saturday morning. The National Weather Service recorded dangerously high winds overnight, including a 64 mph gust, across the region.
Footage from the area shows downed trees and power lines, as well as flooded streets and parking lots. Portions of I-45 were underwater, creating delays north of downtown Houston.
Meteorologist Sara Tonks said, “While there were no confirmed tornadoes in Texas overnight, there were five tornado-warned storms in southern Texas.”
The size of this massive thunderstorm system is hard to overstate.
When viewed as upper-level water vapor imagery, the overall storm system stretches across all of Texas all the way to Nebraska with very moist air coming from the Gulf.
In other parts of the state, the storm passed through the Dallas-Fort Worth area on Thursday night. Denton County Emergency Services responded to two storm-related house fires in the area. One family was displaced but no injuries were reported. Radar suggested a possible tornado near Fort Worth, where a large tree was blown down.
Remarkably, the storm system was large enough to also produce a considerable hail storm on the other side of the state in Del Rio. Reports show that more than two inches of rain have fallen in that area.
