Storms cause widespread outages across Texas, cleanup continues after deadly weekend in US

Severe storms with damaging winds and baseball-sized hail slammed Texas on Tuesday, leaving more than a million businesses and homes without power as much of the state -United has recovered. severe weather, including tornadoesthat killed at least 24 people in seven states over the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

Voters in the second round of elections found some polling stations without power. About 100 voting sites in Dallas County were taken offline. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins declared a disaster area and noted that some nursing homes were using generators. “It will ultimately be a multi-day power outage situation,” Jenkins said Tuesday.

More severe weather conditions and heavy rain were forecast for the Dallas area Tuesday evening. Severe storms were also heading toward Houston, where authorities warned that winds as strong as 70 mph could cause damage less than two weeks after hurricane-force winds knocked out power to more than 800,000 homes and businesses .

In the Midwest, an unusual weather phenomenon called a “gustnado” that resembles a small tornado caused some dramatic moments at a West Michigan lake over the weekend.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell will visit Arkansas on Wednesday as the Biden administration continues to assess the damage caused by the weekend’s tornadoes.

Seven people, including two young children, were killed in Cooke County, Texas, following a tornado that ripped through a mobile home park Saturday, officials said, and seven deaths were reported across Arkansas .

Two people died in Mayes County, Oklahoma, east of Tulsa, authorities said. Among the injured were guests at an outdoor wedding. A Missouri man died Sunday in Sikeston after a tree branch fell on his tent while he was camping.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said five people died in his state during storms that struck near where a devastating tornado swarm killed 81 people in December 2021. One family lost their home for the second time on the same land where a tornado leveled his house. house less than three years ago.

An 18-year-old woman was killed in Clay County, North Carolina, after a large tree landed on her trailer. Authorities also confirmed one death in Nelson County, Virginia.

Adding to the toll over Memorial Day weekend, in Magnolia, Texas, about 40 miles north of Houston, one person died Tuesday when a home under construction collapsed during a storm, reports said. the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

About 150,000 homes and businesses lost power midday Tuesday in Louisiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, West Virginia and Missouri.

It was a dark month, marked by tornadoes and severe weather in the central part of the country.

Tornadoes that struck Iowa last week killed at least five people and injured dozens. Storms killed eight people in Houston earlier this month. April had the second most tornadoes registered in the country. These storms come as climate change generally contributes to the severity of storms around the world.

Late May is the peak of tornado season, but recent storms have been unusually violent, producing very strong tornadoes, said Victor Gensini, a professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University.

“Over the weekend, we had a lot of warm, humid air, a lot of gasoline, a lot of fuel for these storms. And we also had a very strong jet stream. That jet stream contributed to providing the wind shear needed for these types of tornadoes,” Gensini said.

Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, said the series of tornadoes over the past two months was due to a persistent atmosphere of warm, humid air.

This air sits at the northern end of a thermal dome, bringing temperatures typically seen at the height of summer until late May.

The heat index – a combination of air temperature and humidity to indicate how heat is felt by the human body – has reached triple digits in parts of South Texas and is expected to stay there for several days .