Thunderstorms Join Weather’s Assault on Texas

Thunderstorms battered southern Texas on Friday in the latest phase of a weather assault that has brought a flurry of tornadoes, rain, hail and high winds.

Winds gusted up to 75 m.p.h. during the morning from San Antonio and Corpus Christi to Brownsville, weather officials said.

Windows were broken at a mobile home at Flour Bluff Junction and trees and power lines were downed by high winds at Skidmore. Extensive damage to tree limbs and power lines was reported in the Brownsville area.

In the coastal area of southern Texas, thunderstorms produced wind gusts to 83 m.p.h. at South Padre Island and to 86 m.p.h. at Port Isabel.

The storms pelted San Antonio with hail and rain at a rate of 2 inches an hour during the night. Winds of 75 m.p.h. were recorded at the San Antonio airport and winds of up to 80 m.p.h. were recorded elsewhere in the area.

The National Weather Service said radar showed tornadoes near Comfort and two north and south of Boerne. A tornado was sighted 7 miles northwest of Kerrville. No major damage or injuries were reported.

One powerful storm hit the Lampasas County town of Lometa in central Texas. Witnesses said winds and a tornado converged to knock down power lines and destroy or damage a mobile home, an old Santa Fe Railroad roundhouse and a metal shed used to house school buses.

“The (railroad) roundhouse has been here for years and years,” Lometa firefighter Rollie Hall said. “Those walls were 20 to 30 feet high, and now they’re stacked up on the ground like kindling. There are stacks of lumber maybe 6 feet high.”

The weather service said the storms spread into north-central Oklahoma, southeast Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, the Florida Panhandle, southeast Alabama and eastern North Carolina.