As it pounded the Plains on Sunday night, a severe storm system unleashed strong winds and led to tornado warnings for Texas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.
The big picture: Following the National Weather Service’s confirmation that a tornado had slammed the city of Norman late Sunday, damage to structures and widespread power outages were reported in Oklahoma. Early in the evening, there were reports of a possible tornado in Mclean, Texas, which is east of Amarillo.
According to the NWS, there could be “incredible damage” from wind gusts of over 200 mph in some areas of the Southern Plains and Middle Mississippi Valley, as well as “a higher threat of wind gusts of 65 knots or greater, two-inch or greater hail,” and tornadoes on the Enhanced Fujita Scale of EF2 to EF5.
Details: Officers were “on scene for storm damage in the south/east side of Norman,” according to a tweet from the Norman Police Department, adding they were “assessing potential injuries and the magnitude of all the damage.”
According to the NPD, “there are numerous roads closed secondary to downed power lines and debris” in the region.
The local NWS tweeted that the tornado had passed near its Norman office and warned the threat of “damaging winds and possible embedded tornadoes” would continue as the storms moved east over Sunday night.
Between the lines: Embedded tornadoes were anticipated in the forecast derecho — which would bring hurricane-force “widespread damaging winds and embedded swaths of significant severe gusts from 80-110 mph, centered on parts of Oklahoma” over Sunday night.
Of note: NWS describes a derecho as a “very long lived and damaging thunderstorm with a wind damage swath that extends more than 240 miles and has wind gusts of at least 58 mph or greater along most of the length of the storm’s path.”
By the numbers: Nearly 71,800 customers were without power early Monday, per Poweroutage.us. Outages were also reported among almost 42,000 customers in Texas, according to the utility tracker.
