Slideshow: Tornadoes hit Texas

Ralph Lauer / EPA

A series of tornadoes ripped across northern Texas, killing six and injuring dozens more.

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With six people already confirmed dead, rescue crews in a northern Texas town continued their search for victims Friday after a wave of 16 tornadoes crashed through the region, ripping homes to pieces and laying waste to large swaths of the area.

In Granbury, seven people were still missing after an EF4 tornado packing winds up to 200 mph destroyed a neighborhood late Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. 

Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds told reporters that the search for victims had to be expanded because "two of these people that they found were not even near their homes, so we're going to have to search the area out there."

Full coverage from NBCDFW.com

Nearly 100 damaged homes remained off limits Thursday night as crews in the hardest-hit areas continued to a search for survivors and victims.

Hundreds of people had checked in with authorities to say they had survived.

The violent twisters flattened homes, uprooted trees, tossed trailers onto cars and left hundreds homeless in morth Texas. About 100 people were injured. 

All of the dead – confirmed to all be adults — were from the Rancho Brazos neighborhood on the outskirts of Granbury where most of the homes were built in the past five years by residents themselves and the Christian charity group Habitat for Humanity. Granbury is a town of 8,000 people about 65 miles southwest of Dallas.

Officials on Thursday night released the names of the dead: Jose Tovas Alvarez, 34, Robert Whitehead, 60, Tommy Martin, 61, Marjari Davis, 82, Leo Stefanski, 83, and Glenda White, whose age wasn't known.  The identities of the missing were not made public.

“We’re going to keep on looking, we’re not going to give up until every piece of debris is turned over and we know that we’re good to go” Deeds said at a news briefing Thursday evening.

He said that 97 homes sustained damage, from slight to total destruction. Electricity and water were still out to those homes and he said it could be days before residents could return. 

“With the gas and electricity hazards we’re not going to take a chance in the area,” he said.

“It's rough, very rough. Everything's demolished," a resident told KXAS as she rushed away from the neighborhood with her arms around a child. "It was like hell."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, along with other state and local officials, will visit Granbury on Friday.

The National Weather Service in Dallas-Fort Worth said 16  tornadoes were confirmed to have ripped through north Texas.

The tornado that hit Granbury Wednesday night was rated an EF-4 by the National Weather Service, meaning that winds reached between 160 and 200 miles per hour. 

It was the first EF-4 in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area since 1994, National Weather Service spokesman Mark Fox said.

The tornadoes seemed to have caused less damage in Cleburne, where Mayor Scott Cain told KXAS. The town did “have the potential for some injuries,” Cain said.

Some witnesses have said the tornado that swept through Johnson County may have been as much as a mile wide. While that twister that hit Granbury was smaller, but it struck a more populated area, according to Fox.

People in the affected areas had a little more than the national average of 13 minutes warning before the tornadoes struck, according to the National Weather Service.

“The warning came well before the tornadoes,” Fox said. Residents of Montague County were alerted about 15 to 30 minutes before the storm struck, and in Hood County a warning was issued 25 minutes before the tornado touched down.

NBC News' John Newland and Matthew DeLuca contributed to this report.

Related:

• 6 dead, 7 missing as tornadoes rip through Texas
• Texas tornadoes destroy neighborhood built by residents, Habitat for Humanity

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 6:58 PM EDT

North Texas residents took in the devastation on Thursday wreaked by a series of tornadoes that killed six and injured dozens more in what Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds described as a “nightmare” scenario.

Seven of 14 people who had previously been unaccounted for had checked in by Thursday morning, Deeds said at a press conference on Thursday. About 100 people were reported injured and as many as 250 were homeless after the swarm of twisters that ripped up trees and knocked down homes on Wednesday evening.

The six deceased were all adults, Deeds said. There have been no reports of injuries to first responders, the sheriff said.

“Everything’s running smooth, everything’s looking good,” Deeds said of recovery efforts on Thursday.

Full coverage from NBCDFW.com

Granbury, a town of 8,000 about 65 miles southwest of Dallas, was thought to be among the worst-hit areas. Images of the town revealed leveled homes, badly damaged cars, uprooted trees and downed power lines.

Nineteen buildings and 17 mobile homes were destroyed in Hood County, the sheriff’s office said in an initial damage assessment on Thursday. Seventeen more buildings showed major damage, while more than 40 showed minor damage including to windows and roofing shingles.

“It's rough, very rough. Everything's demolished," a resident told KXAS as she hurried away from the neighborhood with her arms around a child. "It was like hell."

Mike Fuentes / AP

Johnny Ortiz, left, and James South carry Miguel Morales, who was injured in a tornado, to an ambulance in Granbury, Texas, on Wednesday.

The six people who were confirmed dead were in the Rancho Brazos neighborhood on the outskirts of Granbury, Deeds said. He added that the homes there were mostly built within the past five years by Habitat for Humanity.

“I had three different storms that came through but this is the worst one,” Deeds said.

The tornadoes swept through the towns of Granbury and nearby Cleburne, causing “heavy damage,” Deeds said. The search for other people who might have gotten caught up in the storm continued with day break.

“I’ve been assured by my deputies on the scene that they’re pretty confident with the six that they found, but there was a report that two of these people that they found were not even near their homes. So we’re going to have to search the area out there,” Deeds said.

The tornado that hit Granbury was rated EF-4 by the National Weather Service in a preliminary report, meaning that winds reached between 160 and 200 miles per hour.

The tornadoes seemed to have caused less damage in Cleburne, where Mayor Scott Cain told KXAS. The town did “have the potential for some injuries,” Cain said.

The National Weather Service reported three tornadoes across Montague and Hood counties. Storm surveys to determine the extent of the damage were planned for Hood, Johnson, Montague, and Parker counties on Thursday, the weather service’s Dallas-Fort Worth office announced. At least ten tornadoes touched ground across Texas on Wednesday evening according to Mark Fox, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Some witnesses have said the tornado that swept through Johnson County may have been as much as a mile wide. While that twister that hit Granbury was smaller, it struck a more populated area and was “just as destructive,” according to Fox.

People in the affected areas had a little more than the national average of 13 minutes warning before the tornadoes struck, according to the National Weather Service.

“The warning came well before the tornadoes,” Fox said. Residents of Montague County were alerted about 15 to 30 minutes before the storm struck, and in Hood County a warning was issued 25 minutes before the tornado touched down.

Nearly forty patients were taken to Lake Granbury Medical Center and 18 discharged, with the majority of injuries including cuts, broken bones, and some head injuries. A total of eight patients were admitted to the emergency room at the Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth. Two of the patients were in critical condition as of 4 a.m. local time.

“I’ve been at LGMC for over 12 years, and we have never seen a community catastrophe with as many injuries as we did through last night,” said Kyle McCombs, chief of staff at Lake Granbury Medical Center, in a press release. “However, these are the types of disasters that our medical team continuously prepares for.”

Relocation centers have been set up Granbury Methodist and First Christian churches in Hood County.

The tornado outbreak was by far the year's deadliest, the weather service said. Prior to Wednesday night, there had been three fatal tornadoes this year, killing one person each in Georgia, Mississippi and eastern Texas.

Anita Foster of the American Red Cross, which opened two shelters in Granbury, told KXAS that 42 people had spent the night in the shelters. She added that only a quarter of people who are left homeless in such disasters typically seek shelter with the Red Cross, indicating that many more had been affected.

"We’re going to have a lot of people who are going to need some help," she said, adding, "It was a really frightening evening. It was a devastating event for our community."

The tornadoes, normal for this time of year, formed as the warm, moist air of the Texas springtime encountered an upper level storm between Wichita and Dallas, Fox said. A few thunderstorms hung over the state on Thursday but the weather system headed eastward for the most part, he said.

Severe weather was expected to sweep into some parts of the Midwest and Plains states with the potential for tornadoes heading into the weekend, the Weather Channel reported.

About 60 departures have been canceled and 70 flights diverted from Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport, spokesman David Magana told the Associated Press.

NBC News' John Newland and Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Thu May 16, 2013 12:39 AM EDT

A destructive and massive storm system draped itself across half the country Thursday, from the Gulf Coast to Canada and with a wingspan from Maine to the Dakotas. At least one person was killed in Mississippi, where a tornado touched down.

Authorities in Kemper County, Miss., along the Alabama state line, reported that the storm also caused several injuries and extensive damage and destroyed at least one steel building.

Gov. Phil Bryant offered thoughts and prayers for people in the path of the storm and said that the state was sending help.

By early afternoon, the tornado was moving toward Alabama, and the more heavily populated cities of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa were in the path of the worst of the storm system.

David Carson / Post-Dispatch via AP

A tree fell on this home in Hazelwood, Mo., during heavy storms Wednesday. There were two reports of tornadoes in the town, according to Weather.com, and the governor declared a state of emergency.

The system, which has disrupted weather all over the country this week, formed a giant T on Thursday. Snow fell in the Dakotas and upstate New York, and ice-slicked roads in Wisconsin. Rain drenched the Ohio Valley and New Orleans.

On Wednesday, the storm system whipped up tornadoes and severe thunderstorms across Missouri and Arkansas, wrecking homes, downing power lines and injuring people in both states.

The St. Louis suburbs were walloped, and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency. The town of Hazelwood reported two tornadoes, and a tree fell on a house there.

While authorities in Arkansas could not confirm a tornado, but three homes were destroyed and more than 50 damaged along with a church. People were trapped inside a house in Lincoln when a tree fell on it.

David Carson / Post-Dispatch via AP

Kristin Little, manager of the Ferguson Optical shop in Hazelwood, Mo., talks with a friend on the phone as she describes the damage caused by a storm, possibly a tornado, on Wednesday.

Van Buren County, in north central Arkansas, was hit hard. More than 30 homes were damaged, six were destroyed, and a fire department was heavily damaged, according to county judge Roger Hooper. Four people were hurt.

The storm made a plaything of an 18-wheeler in Botkinburg, Ark., tossing the truck and damaging a house.

Other parts of the country were hit with a mix of snow and ice, and Gov. Mark Dayton called out the National Guard to help ice-bound Minnesotans. Freezing rain and ice yanked down power lines and tree limbs in Minnesota.

NBC News' Christopher Nelson contributed to this report.

Related:

PhotoBlog: Trees toppled, homes destroyed by powerful storms

Full coverage from weather.com

This story was originally published on Thu Apr 11, 2013 4:24 AM EDT

A late-season storm that threatened to dump up to a foot of heavy snow right before the start of spring slammed the Northeast on Tuesday.

The storm brought a burst of heavy snow in southern New England that was replaced by a mix of sleet and freezing rain in Connecticut and Rhode Island through the morning, the National Weather Service said.

About seven inches had accumulated in parts of Boston by 9 a.m. local time, NBC affiliate WHDH reported. School was canceled in Boston and Worcester, Mass., and residents could expect a mix of rain and snow through Tuesday night, tapering off into flurries on Wednesday morning, according to the weather service.

More from Weather.com

With the official arrival of spring only a day away, New Englanders said they had seen enough snow for one winter.

“I hate it,” Jennifer Hutchins of Concord, N.H., told The Associated Press. “I guess I like to watch it fall, but I don’t like it when it sticks around.”

Rogelio V. Solis / AP

Golf-ball sized hail litters the ground as Andrew Stamps and his wife Valorie prepare to cover their car's rear window after the glass was shattered in a hailstorm on Monday in Pearl, Miss.

"I'm tired of it," Paula Lochhead told the AP. "But we live in New Hampshire, what are you gonna do?"

A FedEx truck slid off ice-slicked roads in Wallingford, Conn., and narrowly missed slamming into a house as it went down an embankment. The driver of the truck was not seriously harmed, NBC Connecticut reported.

Snow also hit New York and New Jersey on Monday night, with reports of a number of accidents as drivers tried to negotiate slushy streets, according to NBC New York.

Some three inches of snow fell on parts of New York City and Long Island before it stopped around midnight, the station said. Suburbs north and west of the city could see 3 to 5 inches before rain sets in. Up to 8 inches were expected at higher elevations in the Poconos, Catskills and Hudson Valley.

Hail smashes cars, breaks windows in South

New York state police said they had responded to 80 reports of accidents or disabled vehicles in a four-county region east of the Hudson River, NBC New York reported.

Forty-eight flights were cancelled at Boston’s Logan Airport and 29 grounded at LaGuardia in New York as of 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related:

Severe storms, large hail pummel parts of South

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 19, 2013 5:48 AM EDT

Like so many things in Washington, D.C., the late-winter storm that was supposed to bring the nation’s capital to a crawl on Wednesday proved to be overhyped and underwhelming.

The official forecast was 4 to 8 inches, but by late evening no snow had accumulated, only slush that could make for a slick roads for the Thursday morning commute.

“We just didn’t have the cold air that we needed to produce a snow event here at the capital. It was not produced by the storm and it did not come in from the storm,” Weather Channel meteorologist Jim Cantore said on NBC’s Nightly News.

The real snowfall occurred west of Washington, in towns like Front Royal, Va., which got pummeled with 17 inches of heavy, wet snow. It caused power outages up and down the mid-Atlantic, with crews struggling to keep up.  

National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro described the snow as gloppy and “consistent with wallpaper paste.”

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared a state of emergency and more than 200,000 residents of the state were without power, especially along the Interstate 81 corridor, which tracks the western border of Virginia. Emergency crews in northern Virginia responded to dozens of weather related accidents throughout the area.

In D.C., fear of a commute-crippling storm closed federal offices and most school districts in the area. Nearly 4,000 salt trucks and plows set out to clear roads throughout northern Virginia.

More than 600 flights were canceled at Reagan National airport and more than 500 at Washington Dulles.

The storm spun just off the mid-Atlantic coast, feeding moisture to the west. Where the air was cool, particularly around Baltimore, it produced sleet. Where it was colder, outside of Washington and especially the Shenandoah Valley to the west, it produced snow.

As the storm lumbered north, it threatened high wind and waves along the coast, including in some cities and towns battered by Hurricane Sandy last fall.

Authorities in Delaware urged people to get out of flood-prone areas and the New Jersey towns of Brick and Toms River issued voluntary evacuation notices and encouraged people in low-lying areas to get their cars to higher ground.

Slideshow: Snow blankets Midwest, heads east

Jim Mone / AP

A storm system stretching from the Dakotas to the Florida Panhandle is predicted to bring snow to the mid-Atlantic states.

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The storm originated in Montana and moved east over the Ohio Valley, dropping 6 inches of snow on Chicago on Tuesday. More than 1,100 flights were canceled in and out of that city’s two airports on Tuesday, according to NBC Chicago.

In the Chicago suburbs, part of the roof of a banquet hall caved in Tuesday afternoon, and snow poured into one wing of the building. Fire officials in the city of Des Plaines said that the building was empty and no one was hurt.

Illinois banquet hall roof collapses under weight of snow

The storm was forecast to dump a mix of rain and snow on the New York area Wednesday, leading to as much as 2 inches of accumulation in New York City.

On Thursday, the low-pressure storm powering the storm is expected to move off the New England coast, but bands of snow wrapping back to the west should complicate travel there.

Andrew Rafferty and Reuters contributed to this report.

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This story was originally published on Wed Mar 6, 2013 4:42 AM EST

BOSTON - A weather system threatening New England with a third straight weekend of winter storms appeared to be weakening on Saturday night, promising less snowfall than expected. 

Another storm was rolling out of the Rocky Mountains in the Western United States and could create blizzard conditions in Colorado over the weekend, according to a National Weather Service advisory. 

Forecasters were also predicting blizzard conditions from Oklahoma through Missouri early next week when another snowstorm hits an area of the Northern United States from the Plains to the Great Lakes. 

But by Saturday evening, the East Coast storm was moving more east and offshore than anticipated - potentially leaving areas like Boston with much less snowfall than originally expected, said Eleanor Vallier-Talbot of the National Weather Service in Taunton, Massachusetts. 

"The further south you go, the less snow. Boston proper might not even see an inch of snow," she said. "The forecast models have been slowly but surely backing off this thing." 

Related: Snow, freezing rain to lash New England through Sunday

Much of the Midwest is already blanketed with snow, with more than a foot reported in Kansas on Thursday, forcing airports to cancel hundreds of flights and leaving motorists stranded on highways. 

On Colorado's high plains, up to a foot of snow was possible overnight and throughout Sunday, with winds gusting up to 45 miles an hour, said Frank Cooper, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder. 

A spokeswoman for the Denver International Airport said passengers could expect delays on Sunday as crews de-iced aircraft and cleared runways, and a Southwest Airlines spokeswoman, Olga Romero, said 46 flights in and out of Denver had been canceled until 11 a.m. on Sunday. 

States of emergency 
The New England coast - from northern Connecticut to southern Maine - was expecting an extended mix of snow and rain, according to a National Weather Service advisory. Residents were taking it in stride. 

"Look, it's winter, it's New England, it snows. Happens every time!" said Steve Scardino, a software sales executive and lifelong New Englander from Hopkinton, Massachusetts. 

Farther north, near Portland, Maine, the heaviest snow was not expected until Sunday, with accumulations up to 8 inches farther inland. 

The weather service said the storm may bring sleet and freezing rain to the Appalachians and mid-Atlantic states as well, with thunderstorms expected in the Southeast. It likely will dump rain from New York City to Philadelphia, it said. The storm barreled eastward after pummeling the Midwest during the week. In Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Sly James said about 60 buses were stuck on snowbound streets on Friday, and even tow trucks were immobilized. 

After a storm last week dumped some 14 inches of snow on Wichita, Kansas, and 11 inches on Kansas City, residents from Texas to Nebraska were bracing for another one early next week, according to AccuWeather.com. 

Forecasters predicted heavy snow developing on Sunday night and increasing to a rate of 2 inches an hour from northern Oklahoma through central Kansas. 

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and Kansas Governor Sam Brownback declared states of emergency because of possible power outages and generally hazardous travel. 

Drought-stricken farmers in the Great Plains, one of the world's largest wheat-growing areas, welcomed the moisture, although experts said even more rain or snow would be needed to ensure healthy crops. 

Related:

Storm expected to give New England third straight weekend of snow

Storms to dump snow on New England, heavy rain on Southeast, forecasters warn

Parts of New England braced for snow on Saturday, with Boston prepared for a mix of snow and freezing rain in the third storm to rake the area in three weekends. The mix will likely make a messy end for a powerful storm system that headed eastward after slamming much of the Midwest with snow earlier this week, meteorologists said.

As many as 1 to 3 inches of snow could fall in Boston, with the heaviest snowfall expected between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

“I’m not thrilled that we’ve got more snow coming this weekend. I’ve had enough of winter,” Boston area resident John Bonnanzio, 54, told Reuters.

But other residents were ready to make the most of the coming storm.

“I’m excited,” Jesse Beecher, 29, told Reuters. “I went out skiing in the streets during the last one, and I’ll do the same thing again.”

A winter weather advisory was set to go into effect for much of the region starting at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

The storm system, which left much of the Midwest buried under snow, has the potential to cause flooding in the southeastern United States and was expected to bring precipitation to much of the east coast, including New York City and north into Massachusetts. The Weather Channel said parts of southern Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and northern and central Massachusetts could see up to 6 to 9 inches of snow over the weekend.

The massive storm system resulted in 570 flight cancellations on Friday, including 127 at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, Reuters said.

Meanwhile, a storm in the Pacific Northwest was expected to dump 2 to 3 feet of snow on the Cascade Mountains through the weekend, according to the National Weather Service. The weather service issued winter storm warnings for parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Utah on Friday.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

• Storm expected to give New England third straight weekend of snow
• Storms to dump snow on New England, heavy rain on Southeast, forecasters warn

A winter storm swept across the Southwest and into the Great Plains on Wednesday, threatening as much as 2 feet of snow in some places and forcing the suspension of play at a pro golf tournament in Arizona.

“A busy clubhouse here in Tucson,” golfer Graeme McDowell posted on Twitter from the WGC/Accenture Match Play Championship at Dove Mountain. “Hot chocolates and teas and generally trying to warm up again.”

The storm had already left dozens of cars stranded on California roads. Treacherous weather there caused collisions that resulted in minor injuries. Part of busy Interstate 5 south of Bakersfield was closed because of ice.

As it moved east, the storm was expected to bring as much as 16 inches of snow to Flagstaff, Ariz., and high wind and blowing dust to Albuquerque, N.M., The Weather Channel reported.

In Colorado, transportation officials steeled for one of the most significant snows of the season. The western half of the state was bracing for as much as 10 inches of snow, The Weather Channel said.

The storm was expected to deliver a harder hit to the Plains. Snow was accumulating quickly Wednesday in Oklahoma, and NBC affiliate KSN reported that roads were packed with snow in southwest Kansas. Schools and churches in both states closed.

The storm picked up strength from moist air streaming up from the Gulf of Mexico and a blast of cold air delivered by an arctic high-pressure system over the Plains.

By Thursday, parts of Kansas could see 2 feet of snow, Nebraska up to a foot and a half and Iowa up to a foot. Sleet and freezing rain could snarl travel in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri, The Weather Channel reported.

More coverage from weather.com

By Friday, the threat of ice will reach parts of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky and into the Appalachian Mountains, forecasters said.

Forecasting models say parts of New England, including Boston, could be in for more snow this weekend — perhaps a foot or more in inland parts of Massachusetts and points north.

New England was hammered two weeks ago by a blizzard that dumped more than 3 feet of snow in some places, and last weekend a more moderate storm packing strong wind complicated flights there.

KCRA-TV

A woman plays with her dog in heavy snow in Northern California.

This story was originally published on Wed Feb 20, 2013 11:34 AM EST