A series of severe thunderstorms and high winds in the Great Plains region on Saturday night resulted in damage to homes, injuries to residents, and left over 50,000 electricity customers in Oklahoma and Texas without power. More than two dozen tornadoes were reported overnight, and more than 13 million people from Texas to Illinois were under tornado watches. The severe weather followed a day in which tornadoes tore through parts of Nebraska and Iowa, leveling dozens of homes on Friday. The National Weather Service forecasted that the thunderstorms would move east into the Mississippi Valley on Sunday, bringing heavy rains in Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana.
Reports indicated that the damage from the severe storms was concentrated in Oklahoma where a series of tornadoes late Saturday night were reported to have ripped through cities like Sulphur, Holdenville, and Ardmore. There were injuries, downed power lines, flooded roads, and damaged homes in several counties in the state. While the tornado threat over central Oklahoma had subsided by early Sunday morning, the eastern and southeast parts of the state still faced a moderate risk until 5 a.m. Nearly 30 tornadoes were reported across the region between Saturday afternoon and early Sunday, including in Kansas, Texas, and Missouri.
On Friday, tornadoes struck Nebraska and Iowa, resulting in at least nine injuries as winds battered the region. Dozens of homes were razed, and an industrial building collapsed. The Weather Service described extensive damage from winds of up to 165 m.p.h. in Douglas County, Neb., where over 150 homes were damaged. More than 100 reports of tornadoes were received in at least five states in the Great Plains on Friday. Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska visited hard-hit areas, describing the damage as “extraordinarily sobering.”
The catastrophic storms left significant destruction in their wake, with one elder at Harvest Alliance Church in Minden, Iowa, reporting that the place of worship was completely leveled in Friday’s storms. The elder, Phil Enke, 65, mentioned that they were trying to salvage documents and photographs amidst the debris. Despite the hassle and mess of the aftermath, he expressed the need to pick up the pieces and move on. The Weather Service highlighted the unusual strength of the tornadoes and the high number of occurrences in and around the metro areas.
Ryan Jewell, a forecaster at the Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service, emphasized the complexity of the situation on Saturday due to the multitude of storms interacting and creating several pockets of potential for severe weather. With tornado watches issued from Texas to Illinois, residents were advised to stay vigilant and prepared for potential tornadoes in the coming hours. The authorities in Oklahoma and Texas worked to assess the damage, attend to the injured, and restore power to the affected areas, while the National Weather Service closely monitored the movement of the storms as they headed towards the Mississippi Valley.
