Storms were roaring through the Dallas-Fort Worth metro early Tuesday morning, delivering hurricane-force wind gusts and stirring tornado fears. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport recorded a wind gust of 77 mph early Tuesday as power outages in the region started to skyrocket.
More than 650,000 customers in Texas were without power and that number continued to climb, according to PowerOutage.us. More than half of the outages were in Dallas County.
These storms have arrived even as some residents are still mourning at least seven people killed in the state during violent storms over Memorial Day weekend. In total, almost two dozen people, including four children, were killed across five states as storms hit the central US over the holiday period, and several communities are grappling with significant losses of homes and businesses.
Central and northern Texas face Tuesday’s most serious threat of severe weather. In the wake of morning storms, additional storms are likely to fire up in the afternoon. Large hail, lightning and wind gusts as strong as 80 mph are the main threats with any storm. A few tornadoes may also occur, according to the National Weather Service.
Sweltering heat will accompany the storms across portions of Texas – part of a sprawling heat wave that has been baking the South in recent days.
A less serious risk of severe storms stretches across swaths of the Southern Plains and a small portion of the Southeast, including most of Texas and parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and western New Mexico, according to the Storm Prediction Center.
Though not under the day’s highest risk, the Texas cities of Houston and San Antonio and Shreveport, Louisiana still could see severe storms.
