MAY 9, 2015
CISCO, TEXAS (AP)
Multiple tornadoes tore through North Texas on Saturday,
leaving one person dead and others unaccounted for in a sparsely populated
farming and ranching area as the system slowly weakened while advancing toward
Fort Worth, officials said.
One of the twisters caused “5 miles of destruction” as it
ravaged homes in a rural area south of the town of Cisco, about 100 miles west
of Fort Worth, Eastland County Judge Rex Fields said.
“The homes that I’ve seen, there are just maybe one or two
walls standing,” Fields, who also serves as the county’s emergency services
coordinator, told the Associated Press. “(The tornado has) taken them into
pieces and blown them out into pastures.”
Fields said one person was killed and there were likely
other injuries. Authorities were going house to house to assess the damage, but
that proved difficult amid the heavy rainfall, he said.
The extent of injuries or fatalities also wasn’t immediately
clear in the town of Burkburnett, about 15 miles north of Wichita Falls, where
a second tornado touched down. A police dispatcher who declined to give her
name due to department policy said tornado sirens could be heard in Burkburnett
just before 6 p.m.
As the storm moved toward Fort Worth later in the evening,
the National Weather Service had canceled tornado warnings in the counties
still in its path.
The weather service on Saturday afternoon had elevated to
“moderate” the risk of tornadoes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and
elsewhere across North Texas. Eastland County, which was part of the enhanced
zone, was pelted with 3-inch hail as the storm rumbled through.
Parts of western Kansas also were hit by severe weather ripe
for tornadoes. In Kansas City, in the eastern part of the state, a band of rain
halted the Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway.
But the threatening skies stretched beyond the Plains states,
as twin weather systems stretching from the Carolinas to California produced an
unseasonably early tropical storm in the Atlantic and a late-season snowstorm
in the Rocky Mountains. Tropical Storm Ana’s forecast track is expected to go
near the coasts of North and South Carolina today.
Meanwhile, up to 5 inches of snow was possible in the
Nebraska Panhandle this weekend, and parts of South Dakota could receive 12 to
24 inches of snow, according to the weather service.