DALLAS – The first storm system of meteorological spring produced tornadoes, hail and hurricane-force winds on Thursday across at least three southern states, and residents captured the scenes on video.
Storms started firing during the early afternoon in Central Texas as the FOX Forecast Center tracked a warm front that lifted northward, which helped the atmosphere become more volatile.
Severe storms during the early afternoon were large hail producers, and residents in Sherman, Texas, took video of at least golf ball-sized hall slamming into vehicles and covering the ground in some neighborhoods.
As the storms developed further east, conditions were more prime for tornadoes to develop. The first video of a twister emerged from the area around Pickton, Texas, where law enforcement said at five homes were damaged.
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FOX Weather’s Will Nunley was at the scene and spotted storm victims trying to assess the damage.
“I could hear the roaring of the storm – whatever it was – and all of a sudden the garage, which the car was parked in, just come up off the ground and went flying in the air. And I mean everything settled down, and we looked out here. The roof was off the house, the garage was gone, the storage shed back there, the kids had a trampoline and everything had blown away,” said Shirley Cartom, a storm victim.
Despite the significant damage there were no initial reports of fatalities in the region.
Tornado Warnings were also issued for areas around the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, but it was the damaging winds that caused most of the problems.
Wind gusts topped hurricane force in many communities in North Texas, which helped lead to at least 350,000 power outages, according to PowerOutage.US.
Due to the inclement weather, aviation traffic was temporarily halted into and out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Power flashes were witnessed throughout the metro, and emergency management reported responding to a partial roof collapse at an Amazon facility southeast of Dallas in Balch Springs.
According to initial reports, there were no injuries at the facility.
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Louisiana also saw its fair share of severe storms, with at least one tornado that struck the area around Shreveport.
Several businesses were damaged by the twister, and debris littered roadways in Bossier City.
There were no reports of initial injuries, but around 5,000 outages were reported in the northwest part of the state.
The threat of severe storms is expected to advance northeastward on Friday and impact the Tennessee and Ohio valleys with damaging winds and possible tornadoes.