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Tag: Live updates: Texas

  • Live updates: Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky face tornadoes and severe weather

    Live updates: Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky face tornadoes and severe weather

    The National Weather Service rates the strength of tornadoes using the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale, which ranks tornadoes from 0 to 5 by assessing damage and determining wind speed.

    Here’s the damage associated with each level:

    EF0: 65- to 85-mph wind gusts

    These tornadoes are the least destructive and typically break tree branches, damage road signs and push over small, shallow-rooted trees.

    EF1: 86- to 110-mph wind gusts

    With similar wind speeds to weak hurricanes, these tornadoes can push moving cars off course, shift mobile homes from their foundations and remove roof surfaces.

    EF2: 111- to 135-mph wind gusts

    Significant damage starts to emerge from these tornadoes, which can snap or uproot trees, destroy mobile homes and tear roofs completely off homes.

    They also can pick up small objects and turn them into dangerous projectiles.

    EF3: 136- to 165-mph wind gusts

    These tornadoes produce severe damage, uprooting nearly all trees in their path, blowing over large vehicles like trains and buses and significantly damaging buildings.

    Less than 5% of all tornadoes are rated EF3 or higher.

    EF4: 166- to 200-mph wind gusts

    Easily destroying homes, tossing cars and downing large trees, these tornadoes can be devastating.

    EF5: 200+-mph wind gusts

    These monsters cause complete devastation, flattening nearly everything in their path.

    They are rare, with only 59 have been recorded in the United States since 1950, according to the Storm Prediction Center.

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  • Live updates: Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma face tornadoes and severe weather risk

    Live updates: Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma face tornadoes and severe weather risk

    This screen grab from a CNN affiliate video shows storm damage in Sanger, Texas, on May 26. KTVT

    At least five people, including children, are dead after a possible tornado struck Texas overnight, as severe storms caused power outages and forced residents to shelter in place across the central United States on Memorial Day weekend.

    The five fatalities were reported in Cooke County, Texas, and three occurred in one household, Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told CNN on Sunday morning. Two children in the area were reported missing and are still unaccounted for as of Sunday morning.

    More than 110 million people across broad swaths of the US are under threat of large hail, damaging winds and fierce twisters Sunday, mainly throughout the mid-Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee River valleys.

    As the storms move east, the Storm Prediction Center warned of “violent tornadoes, extreme hail and corridors of widespread wind damage.”

    Inside a Shell gas station, 60 to 80 people were trapped until the storm blew over, Sappington said. Multiple injuries were reported at the station, but none were life-threatening, he added.

    Many vehicles were damaged and destroyed, leaving about 40 people stranded. They were transported by bus to another gas station in Gainesville, where they were picked up by family members.

    Damage elsewhere: In north Denton County, Texas, a possible tornado injured an unknown number of people, damaged several homes, overturned 18-wheelers, downed trees and knocked out power lines on Saturday night, authorities said early Sunday.

    Damage to several homes was also reported in the neighboring city of Celina.

    Across state lines, officials said a possible tornado swept through Rogers County, Oklahoma, downing power lines and trees and damaging homes. In the city of Claremore, officials said there was “a lot of damage” and electricity will be out for much of the city “for an extended period of time.”

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  • Live updates: Texas, Oklahoma Smokehouse Creek Fire

    Live updates: Texas, Oklahoma Smokehouse Creek Fire

    Frank Probst shared video of his destroyed home in Fritch, Texas. Courtesy Frank Probst 

    Frank Probst bought his home in Fritch, Texas, six months ago, and on Tuesday watched it enveloped in flames in his rearview mirror as his family evacuated from an encroaching wildfire.

    “My grandson had hollered at me about a fire, and I turned around and the flames were kind of rolling up over the roof behind me,” Probst said of his home in Fritch, roughly 40 miles northeast of Amarillo. An official has said “quite a few structures” were destroyed in Fritch, which also was dealing with power and gas outages.

    Probst said he immediately went to check on his elderly neighbors right as the evacuation sirens went off Tuesday. They focused on getting the neighbors out first, and they were the last ones out, he said.

    “It was in the rearview mirror. The flames rolled and it took my whole neighborhood at once,” Probst said of his Fritch home.

    Probst’s family wasn’t able to grab any of their belongings before they had to rush to safety, he said.

    “It happened so quick. By the time the evacuation sirens went off, it was too late,” he said.

    With fire still surrounding the nearby roads, Probst said he, his wife, and their 6-year-old grandson had to sleep in the parking lot of a local grocery store Tuesday night.

    Probst on Wednesday returned to where his home once stood.

    “It’s all gone,” he said.

    The Probst family is staying at a motel in Amarillo for now, and he said most of the homes they passed to get there have been destroyed. 

    “Entire neighborhoods just gone,” Probst said.

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