NATION : Twisters Cause Damage in Texas

Residents and witnesses said three funnel clouds didn’t quite touch down but still caused $5.5 million in damage, while the Weather Service said one tornado did scour the surface.

No injuries were reported, but about 80% of the city was blacked out and phone service was spotty until this morning.

“There was one that hit Spearman itself, and there were multiple tornadoes in the vicinity of Spearman for several hours last night,” Steven Cooper of the National Weather Service office in Amarillo said today. “There were about three different storm systems. Two dropped tornadoes.”

The funnel clouds were “too numerous to count,” he said.

Ten mobile homes and 10 houses were reported destroyed, while a church and a restaurant were heavily damaged. Mayor Burl Buchanan estimated that 5% of the town of 3,500 had property damage.