At least 11 people were injured after heavy rain and tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma on Saturday night and into Sunday morning.
No one has died as a result of the storms, though 100 homes were damaged across the state, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said at a news conference Sunday. Stitt said he has enacted an emergency declaration for six counties.
Stitt added that there are residential areas with "significant" damage.
It's unclear how many tornadoes affected the state, but left in their wake was damage to several structures, downed power lines, traffic lights and trees, according to the Oklahoma City Fire Department. Video shows that Newcastle Elementary School in the Oklahoma City metro area sustained major damage, including tiling that fell off of the building's facade.
Elsewhere in Oklahoma City, mounds of debris, including wood and sheetrock, could be seen strewn around. The full extent of the damage is still being ascertained, but EF3-level damage (136-165 mph winds) was found in Harrah in central Oklahoma, and EF1-level damage (86-110 mph winds) was found in Newcastle, according to the National Weather Service field office in Norman. The EF scale is a rating system used to classify tornadoes based on wind speed.
Chad Allcox, the mayor of Choctaw, Oklahoma, told NBC News that 15 homes in the Railhead neighborhood were "completely leveled" by the storms. An additional 49 homes were damaged.
No power lines were downed and no serious injuries have been reported in Choctaw, which is on the southeast corner of Oklahoma City and took a direct hit from a tornado that was on the ground for about 20 miles, Allcox said.
"We definitely weren't expecting this tornado, but the outpouring of support has been amazing," he said. "In bad times there is always something good, and once again the community comes together to help one another pick up the pieces."
Allcox added that the storms are "devastating going into the holidays."
Eleven people in Oklahoma County were transported by ambulances to hospitals, according to the field office.
In Oklahoma City, five people were taken to local hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, while several others sought treatment on their own, according to fire department spokesperson Scott Douglas. It's not clear whether they were injured as a result of the tornadoes or the heavy rain, but the fire department said it responded to several vehicles that had been flooded.
Oklahoma and the rest of the central and southern Plains are not yet in the clear.
The severe weather is expected to continue into Monday, "with the heaviest rain expected to impact central to eastern Oklahoma into portions of northwestern Arkansas and southern Missouri," according to an advisory from the National Weather Service.
"Multiple rounds of strong-severe thunderstorms are possible today through tonight over parts of the southern Plains," the weather service's storm prediction center said in an update. "Tornadoes, damaging winds and large hail are possible."
The weather service office in Norman said on social media platform X that a tornado watch issued Sunday evening across southeastern Oklahoma was canceled because the likelihood of severe storms redeveloping in the area in the next few hours had dropped.
However, thunderstorms were producing rain at a pace of about 1 inch per hour in parts of southeastern Oklahoma, prompting federal forecasters to issue flash flood warnings — which state flooding is imminent and higher ground should be sought — for Haskell, Latimer, central Le Flore and northeastern Pittsburg counties through 2 a.m. Monday.
By Monday night, the threat of severe weather will shift toward Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, the mid-Mississippi Valley and the Midwest.
Most of Oklahoma remains under a flood watch with a threat of heavy rain, and more than 12,000 utility customers did not have power shortly before 1 a.m. ET, according to Poweroutage.us.
In Sunday's news conference, Stitt acknowledged that Election Day on Tuesday looms large, considering the amount of power outages across the state. He said officials are prioritizing making sure all the polling places are up and running by then.
