Communities from Texas to New York were picking up the pieces Tuesday after a devastating holiday weekend brought tornadoes, storms and heavy rain that killed at least 24 people and left hundreds of thousands without power.
The period of severe weather is still not over for Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which was rocked by early-morning storms Tuesday that knocked out power, downed trees, created damaging hail and made a mess of the area.
More than 1 million Texas homes and businesses remained without power Tuesday afternoon, according to Poweroutage.us, and officials warn that it could be days before the lights — and air conditioning — come back on.
The Dallas County judge, or chief executive, Clay Jenkins, said the power issue "will be a multiday" situation.
Tuesday's storms in North Texas come just days after a system claimed killed at least seven people over the holiday weekend in nearby Cooke County.
Memorial Day brought severe, driving rains with very little visibility to Iowa, social media videos show. Hailstones the size of golf balls clattered off vehicles in Oak Cliff, a neighborhood in Dallas.
Video on social media showed strong winds and heavy rain in Lewisville, about 28 miles north of Dallas.
Strong winds pushed an American Airlines plane away from a gate at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, an airport spokesperson confirmed.
A hailstorm Monday was so strong in Hurst, in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, that it breached the roof of a Walmart store, prompting shoppers to use nearby products to provide shelter, according to videos uploaded to Instagram.
Royse City Methodist Church in Rockwall, east of Dallas, was struck by lightning.
"There were no reported injuries, and the building is a total loss," Rockwall fire spokesperson Ariana Kistner said.
About 40 miles away in Frisco, lightning struck two neighboring homes Tuesday, resulting in heavy damage to one and moderate damage to the other, according to the local fire department. There were no casualties.
The damaging weather has been widespread across the region and throughout much of the country. National Weather Service offices in Kentucky and Arkansas sent out teams to survey the wreckage from deadly holiday storms. They found damage consistent with EF3-strength tornadoes — the third-highest rating on the enhanced Fujita scale, which measures tornado intensity, consistent with winds of up to 165 mph.
The office in Paducah, Kentucky, said it was consulting with experts internally to determine whether the tornado should be classified EF4, the second-highest rating, used when winds are 166 to 200 mph.
Drone camera video showed the sheer extent of the storm damage in Paragould, Arkansas, where homes had lost roofs and some structures were almost entirely demolished.
The weather service’s damage survey team in Louisville, Kentucky, confirmed two EF1 tornadoes touched down Sunday, with wind speeds of up to 90 mph.
As for the rest of the week and beyond, the first signs are emerging that this hectic and historic tornado season — there have been 461 tornado reports just in May — could be slowing down.
The extreme heat that has pushed much of Texas and the Gulf Coast to three-figure temperatures in the last few days is finally softening, but the index — a measure of how hot it feels — could still reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, the weather service said.
