2 tornadoes hit Texas; 1 dead

Associated Press

CISCO, TEXAS

Multiple tornadoes tore through North Texas on Saturday, leaving one person dead and others unaccounted for in a sparsely populated farming and ranching area as the system slowly weakened while advancing toward Fort Worth.

Walter Fairbanks, fire chief in Cisco — about 100 miles west of Fort Worth, confirmed there was one fatality when the tornado hit Saturday afternoon near the town.

Authorities were going house to house to assess the damage, but that proved difficult amid the heavy rainfall, Eastland County Judge Rex Fields said.

The extent of injuries or fatalities wasn’t immediately clear there or in the town of Burkburnett, about 15 miles north of Wichita Falls, where the second tornado touched down. A police dispatcher who declined to give her name due to department policy said tornado sirens could be heard in Burkburnett before 6 p.m.

The weather service on Saturday afternoon elevated to “moderate” the risk of tornadoes in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and elsewhere across North Texas. Eastland County, which was part of the enhanced zone, was pelted with 3-inch hail as the storm rumbled through.

Storms also brought heavy rain and quarter-sized hail to parts of southwest Oklahoma on Saturday, but meteorologists said there was so much rain — and so little sun — that the tornado threat there lessened throughout the day. Parts of western Kansas also were bracing for severe storms.

But the threatening skies stretched beyond the Plains states, as twin weather systems stretching from the Carolinas to California produced an unseasonably early tropical storm in the Atlantic and a late-season snowstorm in the Rocky Mountains. Tropical Storm Ana’s forecast track is expected to go near the coasts of North and South Carolina today.

Meanwhile, up to 5 inches of snow was possible in the Nebraska Panhandle this weekend, and parts of South Dakota could receive between 12 to 24 inches of snow, according to the weather service.