The same line of powerful severe storms that battered the Houston area in southeastern Texas is now pushing its way across the Southeast and is expected to impact areas from northern Florida to eastern North Carolina.
A Tornado Watch has been issued for the central and eastern Florida Panhandle and extreme southeastern Alabama until 11 a.m. EST.
HOW YOU SHOULD PREPARE FOR A TORNADO
The FOX Forecast Center said the threat of severe storms will continue Wednesday morning from the Florida Panhandle to southern Georgia. Strong wind shear – the changing of wind speed and/or direction with height – will continue the tornado threat in these areas. The shear will begin to relax Wednesday afternoon, which should allow the tornado threat to decrease as the line of storms moves eastward across the Southeast.
Damaging wind gusts will be the main threat for cities in Florida like Jacksonville, Gainesville, Tampa and Orlando, as well as Savannah in Georgia.
Farther north across the eastern Carolinas, storms will intensify through the day as moist, unstable air streams northward off the Atlantic Wednesday afternoon.
The threat of damaging wind gusts and tornadoes will be the greatest closer to the coast from Charleston in South Carolina, to Virginia Beach in Virginia. The threat of severe storms will end after about 10 p.m. EST as the line of storms moves off the coast and into the Atlantic.
The same line of severe weather spawned at least 14 reports of tornadoes across southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana on Tuesday afternoon, causing damage and injuries. Luckily, no deaths have been reported.
LOOK AT THE DAMAGE LEFT BEHIND BY SEVERE STORMS, TORNADOES THAT RIPPED THROUGH HOUSTON AREA
Officials are calling the aftermath 15 miles outside of Houston in Pasadena, Texas, nothing short of catastrophic as the true scope of the damage is revealed. Homes and buildings have been torn apart, as cars and trucks were tossed aside as if there were toys.
However, the Houston area was not spared by the storms that triggered dozens of Tornado Warnings, including a rare Tornado Emergency – a first for the area and among the National Weather Service’s most dire warnings.
Pasadena and Deer Park were some of the hardest-hit areas after a tornado tore through suburbs on the southeastern side of the Houston metro area.
‘EXTENSIVE DAMAGE’ SEEN AFTER FIRST TORNADO EMERGENCY ISSUED FOR HOUSTON AREA
Workers at a daycare in Deer Park told FOX 26 Houston they had to move the children there to safety as the twister hit.
“They were scared,” one worker said. “Everybody was kind of into a panic cause we went fast and tried to get everybody in fast, and so they were a little scared, but we talked to them, put on Cocomelon, calmed them down, and after that, everybody was pretty much OK.”
For Ryan Lee, a senior captain at the Houston Fire Department, it was definitely a different experience.
“Just from my 20 years in the Houston Fire Department, even in my decade in the Rescue division, we’d go to building collapses and stuff like that, but this was a different experience,” he said. “It was just widespread damage – it was impressive, the level of damage.”
As of Wednesday morning, nearly 50,000 power outages spread across Texas and Louisiana, about half as much as was reported during the height of the storms.