Storm-weary Texas battered again as powerful storm, strong winds kill 1, cause widespread damage
HOUSTON (AP) — Power outages remained widespread in storm-weary Texas after another burst of severe weather flooded streets, uprooted trees and ripped off roofs. Authorities said a teenager was killed at a construction site while working on a home that collapsed.
The severe weather Tuesday, which at one point left more than 1 million customers without electricity, was a continuation of deadly storms, some spawning tornadoes, across the U.S. over the long Memorial Day weekend that killed 24 people in seven states.
The flooding and damage in Houston came just weeks after the area was walloped by a weather event known as a derecho — a widespread, long-lived windstorm that’s associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. That storm left eight people dead and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers.
“A lot of people are without power again. We just got through with derecho a couple week ago, which was extremely devastating and many are still trying to recover from,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the county home to Houston, said in a video posted on social media late Tuesday
Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell was scheduled to travel Wednesday to Arkansas, where seven people died in the weekend storms, as the Biden administration continues assessing tornado damage.
The potential for heavy rains, localized flash flooding and severe weather will continue Wednesday through Oklahoma and Texas. Thunderstorms are predicted late Wednesday and Thursday across eastern Montana and Wyoming and northeast Colorado before pushing into Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and northern Texas.
Tuesday’s power outages in the Dallas metro area prompted officials to extend polls by two hours in the state’s runoff elections after dozens of polling places lost power.
The city opened respite centers, where residents could seek shelter and air conditioning after winds gusting to 80 mph (129 kph) caused extensive damage to homes. Local news footage showed several homes without roofs, with some of that damaged caused by trees ripped from the ground by the winds. City crews planned to work around the clock this week to clear downed trees, a notice on the city’s website said.
Social media posts showed winds pushing one American Airlines plane away from a gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
The airline said in a statement that the severe weather affected several parked and unoccupied aircraft. No one was injured.
“Our maintenance team is currently conducting thorough inspections and will make any needed repairs,” the statement said.
The airport said in an email to The Associated Press that about 500 flights were canceled because of the weather. Nearly another 200 flights were canceled at Dallas Love Field Airport, according to the website FlightAware.
Cars crawled through flooded highways and more than 300,000 customers were without power in the Houston area, which includes parts still recovering from the hurricane-force winds earlier this month.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that a 16-year-old boy was killed when a home under construction began to shift and then collapsed during a thunderstorm in the Houston suburb of Magnolia. The teen was confirmed to be an employee of the construction company and was authorized to be on the site, the statement said.
Magnolia Fire Department Division Chief Jason Herrman said it was one of three homes under construction that collapsed.
There doesn’t appear to be much relief in sight.
The National Weather Service said the “very active and highly impactful” weather pattern will continue in the central U.S. over the next several days.
Destructive storms over the weekend caused deaths in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia. Meanwhile in the Midwest, an unusual weather phenomenon called a “gustnado” that looks like a small tornado brought some dramatic moments to a western Michigan lake over the weekend.
For more information on recent tornado reports, see The Associated Press Tornado Tracker.
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Associated Press journalists around the country contributed to this report, including Paul J. Weber, Ken Miller, Jennifer McDermott, Sarah Brumfield, Kathy McCormack, Acacia Coronado, Jeffrey Collins, Bruce Schreiner, Julio Cortez, Valerie Gonzalez and Mark Thiessen.
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