Storm barrels through Tiny Texas Town, at least 3 killed
A powerful storm hit the north Texas town of Matador on Wednesday night, killing at least three people, damaging about a dozen buildings and launching a search for people who may have been injured or trapped by debris, authorities said.
Matador, which has a population of about 600, is about 180 miles northwest of Dallas and was issued a tornado warning when the storm swept through the area around 8 p.m., said William Iwasko, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lubbock, about 80 miles away. . He said the damage in Matador suggested there was “most likely” a tornado, but that had not been confirmed early Thursday morning.
Matador Mayor Pat Smith, who also provides emergency medical services in the city, said in a short phone interview late Wednesday that at least three people were killed and others may have been injured. He added that there was “a lot of damage”.
Several businesses and homes were destroyed on the western side of Matador, Mr Smith said, adding that rescuers had been pulling residents out of collapsed houses.
“It’s really bad,” Mr. Smith said when emergency services heard shouting directions in the background.
The Lubbock Fire Department said it helped in search and rescue operations in Matador. Images of Matador posted on Twitter by Jacob Rileya meteorologist from the Lubbock television station KLBK, showed emergency workers moving through a landscape dotted with flat structures.
Mr Smith said electricity had also gone out in Matador, the county seat of Motley County. More than 100,000 people in Texas were without power early Thursday morning. according to the site poweroutage.us. That included most of the residents of Motley and two other counties.
Bad weather hit Matador Wednesday night as thunderstorms and hailstorms battered parts of Texas and Colorado. In Morrison, Colo., near Denver, a concert at the outdoor Red Rocks Amphitheater was postponed and then postponed because of a hail storm.
Footage showed concertgoers at the venue fleeing for shelter as streams of ice and water flowed down stairs and lightning bolts flashed in the sky. Dozens of people were injured and at least seven were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, ABC affiliate Denver reports7 reported.
Nearly four million people in Colorado were still underwater a severe thunderstorm awaits from about 2 a.m. local time. The National Weather Service said in a forecast that wet weather, including thunderstorms and possible flash flooding, was expected over the next several days across much of the central United States.
The storm hit Matador at the end of a day when a heat dome hovered over much of Texas and Oklahoma. Texas officials issued an extreme heat warning for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. They also asked residents elsewhere in the state to conserve electricity, citing concerns that several days of triple-digit temperatures could strain the power grid.
Last week, the Texas town of Perryton was devastated by a tornado, killing three people and crippling dozens of mobile homes. That tornado was part of a ferocious series of storms that moved across the South.
Scientists say tornadoes seem to be occurring in larger “clusters” in recent years and the area of the country known as Tornado Alley, where most tornadoes occur, appears to be shift eastward.