Texas blitzed by deadly storms, over 400,000 remain in the dark
Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex were rocked by severe thunderstorms on Tuesday packing hurricane-force wind gusts and a deluge that turned roads into rivers.
A worker was killed after storms demolished newly constructed homes in Magnolia, Texas, on May 28.
The latest round of destructive storms swept across Texas on Tuesday, starting the day in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex before blasting through Houston, upending travel following the extended Memorial Day weekend. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins issued a disaster declaration Tuesday morning in the wake of the severe storms.
At least one person has died amid the latest round of severe weather, a 16-year-old worker who was in a building that was under construction when it collapsed, Houston-based news station KTRK reported.
A 77-mph wind gust was clocked at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport at 5:47 a.m., CDT, contributing to more than 600 flight delays and 270 cancellations at the airport, according to FlightAware.The hurricane-force wind gusts caused havoc across the area, snapping tree limbs and bringing down power lines.
More than 1 million homes and businesses were without power for a time on Wednesday, but by Wednesday morning, the number of outages across the state was down to 435,000, according to PowerOutage.us. Power outages could last for several days in the hardest-hit areas, according to WFAA.
A car drives on a flooded road in Houston on May 28. (X/ @PNav57)
The morning storms also unleashed a deluge that caused flooding in parts of the city. Some areas picked up nearly 2 inches of rain in under four hours, just shy of the 2.35 inches that fell in Dallas all of last May.
Roads turned to river in the hardest-hit areas, including in Garland, Texas, located a few miles northeast of downtown Dallas.
Additional thunderstorms are in the forecast for Texas which could complicate cleanup and power restoration efforts in the wake of Tuesday's storms, as well as threaten with additional rounds of flooding and damage.
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