North Texas was hit by at least eight tornadoes Tuesday night as a powerful storm system swept through the region.
The National Weather Service said Wednesday it had confirmed eight tornadoes and expected that number to rise to “close to or higher than 12.”
Of the confirmed tornadoes, four touched down in Tarrant County, one in Wise County, one in Cooke County and one west of Paris, Texas. Some of the tornadoes had winds in excess of 100 mph.
The National Weather Service said all of the tornadoes came from the main storm.
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A FOX 4 report says that there were several houses destroyed and multiple injuries. The extent of the total damage remains unknown at this time.
In Grapevine, a Dallas suburb, a tornado left miles of damage and destroyed dozens of homes and businesses. At least five people were injured.
A photo shared by police showed a badly damaged 18-wheeler in the parking lot of a Sam’s Club.
A tornado damaged a truck in the parking lot of Sam’s Club in Grapevine, Texas.
(Grapevine Police)
A photo shared by a Twitter user showed a collapsed ceiling inside Sam’s Club.
The roof of a Sam’s Club collapsed.
(Twitter/@Blondies_77 via KDFW)
The tornadoes come as part of a volatile storm ripping through the South, killing an 8-year-old boy and his mother in Louisiana, tearing apart mobile homes and chicken coops in Mississippi and threatening neighboring southern states with more severe weather Wednesday. .
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The Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office said the body of 8-year-old Nikolus Little was found around 11pm Tuesday in a wooded area. His mother, Yoshiko A. Smith, 30, was found dead under storm debris around 2:30 am Wednesday.
A chicken farm was damaged by a tornado on Wednesday, December 14, 2022 in Pelahatchi, Miss.
(Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, via AP)
To the north, the massive storm system created blizzard-like conditions across the Great Plains and was expected to push more snow and ice into the Appalachians and New England. The winter blast dumped more than 2 feet of snow across parts of South Dakota.
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Wednesday’s forecast called for more severe storms and additional tornadoes were expected in an area of the Gulf Coast region populated by nearly 3 million people from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama. More damaging weather was possible on the Florida fringe.
Tornadoes in North Texas destroyed multiple homes and property.
(KDFW)
A steady stream of tornado warnings were issued Wednesday in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
In Union Parish, on Louisiana’s northern border with Arkansas, Farmerville Mayor John Crow said a tornado Tuesday night heavily damaged an apartment complex where 50 families lived and leveled a neighboring trailer park with about 10 houses.
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Shannon Futch, Union Parish’s director of emergencies, said there were reports of numerous people being treated for cuts and bruises and at least two people hospitalized after a tornado caused damage about 5 miles in length, downing trees on a dozen homes.
“Some people even spent the night in their houses that had big pine trees,” Futch said. “They had nowhere to go.”
A suspected tornado reported in New Iberia, in southwestern Louisiana, damaged several buildings on the New Iberia Medical Center campus, hospital officials said, leaving five people with minor injuries.
In neighboring Mississippi, a suspected tornado destroyed four large chicken coops, one of which housed 5,000 roosters, in Rankin County, Mississippi, Sheriff Bryan Bailey said. Mobile homes in a park in Sharkey County, Mississippi, have been reduced to piles of crushed rubble. Resident Leslie Jackson told WLBT-TV that her house was one of the few left standing.
Freezing weather from the major storm was expected to affect the US from coast to coast. It started with heavy snowfall in the Sierra Nevada and was predicted to bring ice and snow to the eastern US in the coming days.
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Forecasters expect the storm system to hobble the upper Midwest with ice, rain and snow for days, as well as move into the northeast and central Appalachians. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm watch Wednesday night through Friday afternoon, depending on the timing of the storm. Residents from West Virginia to Vermont were told to watch for a possible significant mix of snow, ice and sleet.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
