A line of severe thunderstorms swept through southeastern Texas and Louisiana on Thursday, blasting the Houston area with ferocious winds that left at least four dead and more than 1 million power customers without electricity. The line of severe thunderstorms continued today, early Friday morning, across the Gulf Coast leaving a trail of wind damage and power outages there in their wake.
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Winds reported as high as 78 mph toppled trees, blew out windows of high-rise buildings and caused transmission towers holding power lines to crumble. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office and National Weather Service encouraged everyone to stay off the roads.
"Widespread debris, glass and electrical lines are in the streets," the NWS warned.
PowerOutage.us reported that more than 800,000 people in the Houston metro area lost power, but with nearby counties also dealing with outages, the state’s tally climbed to well over 1 million customers at the storm's peak.
The line of storms eventually raced east into Louisiana, pummeling New Orleans with gusts of 84 mph and leaving over 200,000 in Louisiana without power.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire said at least four people were killed by the storm, and state resources were being requested to help with the recovery. At least two were killed by falling trees, and a third was killed by a falling crane, officials said.
"We had a storm with 100 mph winds — the equivalent of Hurricane Ike. (There's) considerable damage downtown," Whitmire said during a press conference Thursday night. "We had firefighters taking live wires off (Interstate) 290 that was blocking thoroughfares."
The local National Weather Service office issued several Tornado Warnings for the Houston metro on Thursday evening, but by the time the storms cleared, strong winds were believed to have caused most of the damage.
Windows appeared to be blown out in downtown buildings, including around the Wells Fargo Plaza. The broken glass and debris forced city leaders to implore non-essential downtown workers to stay home on Friday and ask business owners to be flexible with employee absences.
In nearby Minute Maid Park, wind and water were seen blowing into the building, but the severe weather did not appear to affect the play of the Astros baseball game.
Local residents described the storm's impacts as hurricane-like despite the severe weather lasting less than an hour.
Due to the severe weather, ground stops were also issued at Bush Intercontinental Airport and Houston William P. Hobby Airport. At the peak of the storm, gusts at both airports reached 62 mph. A gust of 71 mph was clocked in College Station, while Cypress hit a gust of 65 mph. A wind gauge along the water in the Highlands area near I-10 reported a gust of 78 mph.
The Houston school district closed all public schools today, Friday and said they would reopen Monday.
The dangerous thunderstorms were expected to transition into a flood threat during the overnight hours as already saturated grounds were expected to receive an additional 2-5 inches of rainfall.
The line of severe thunderstorms continued their march across the Gulf Coast Thursday night into early Friday morning, leaving a trail of wind damage and power outages in their wake.
Source: FOX Weather
