After the third round of severe thunderstorms since Tuesday, about 300,000 customers were without power Friday morning, mostly in East Texas and around Houston.
The city also experienced intense storms Thursday evening that delivered isolated wind damage, following a bigger complex that left more than a million customers in the dark in Texas on Tuesday. Then there was the deadly and destructive derecho of May 16, as well as numerous lesser events throughout the month.
As this month ends, there were severe storms producing wind damage on 23 of the 31 days of May in Texas, according to data compiled by the Weather Service. This was among the busiest Mays on record for the entire country, and the state contributed a large chunk of the stormy weather events.
More storms hit Houston and central to East Texas
On the northern periphery of a heat dome — a sprawling area of high pressure — centered over Mexico, and to the south of an active jet stream carving through the central U.S., Texas and Houston have been in the crosshairs frequently of late.
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Thursday evening, a wind gust of 84 mph was recorded at Toledo Bend Dam in Newton, about 100 miles northeast of Houston, with mid-50 mph readings near the city. This was associated with a squall line in East Texas and Louisiana late in the day.
Friday’s storms were introduced by a stunning shelf cloud on the outflow of a bowing line headed toward Houston around sunrise.
Storms that first developed near the New Mexico border in West Texas on Thursday afternoon began increasing in coverage around Abilene in the center of the state, then dove southeastward across a large chunk of eastern Texas through the night. Wind gusts ranging from about 50 to 65 mph occurred with the line as it passed through south-central and Southeast Texas on Friday morning.
A wind gust of 59 mph was observed in Austin, and a 54 mph gust was recorded in Sugar Land, near Houston. Several locations around Waco saw gusts between 60 and 65 mph. Numerous trees were reported downed or snapped across the region, including in downtown Waco.
At least 50,000 customers were restored in the 24 hours prior to this storm complex in Harris County, home to Houston, according to CenterPoint Energy statistics. As storms moved in Friday morning, just past 1,450 customers remained in the dark. That number spiked to at least 45,000 for a time early Friday.
At the peak of Tuesday’s outages, 300,000 or more customers experienced service cuts in Harris County. During the extreme and deadly derecho of May 16, when gusts around 100 mph hit parts of Houston, about 1 million lost power in the city.
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Flash flood warnings were also issued Thursday morning near Conroe, to the north of Houston, early Friday. Two to four inches fell in parts of that region, with another inch or two possible at the time the warning was raised.
Share this articleShareThursday’s West Texas twister
During what was anticipated to be a quieter stretch following a hyperactive few weeks for storms, another round of mega isolated supercells erupted in parts of West Texas late Thursday. As shown in the radar imagery above, some of those rotating storms ended up merging and crashing southeastward toward Houston.
The storm of the day in the region popped up near Midland and Odessa, in Southwest Texas.
It erupted to the north of those dusty cities as a wind shift known as an outflow boundary from earlier storms that lollygagged west and southwest during the late afternoon into evening. Zones of shifting winds with these boundaries can amplify tornado risk, even in otherwise marginal setups for twisters.
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That was the case Thursday as a beastly and beautiful “barber pole” of a storm found the boundary.
From there, it spit out several twisters, including a large one that hardly moved over a 30-minute life span. Travelers at Midland International Air & Space Sport witnessed the tornadoes before the airport lost power and people were ushered to lower levels. It was also viewed from the Weather Service office in Midland, according to reports logged by the Storm Prediction Center.
The supercell near Midland ended up dying off and not becoming part of the squall line that later moved in on Houston. Several other storms near and south of the international border along near the Rio Grande also witnessed storms capable of having tornadoes develop.
What’s next?
A severe weather threat continues in parts of Texas at least through the weekend. Around Houston, there is some chance things trend legitimately quieter ahead as the pattern shifts somewhat into early June.
At the same time, fewer storms may mean more heat. And given the persistent heat dome to the south plus the remnant jet stream associated with a dying El Niño, it’s hard to have much confidence that significant and lasting change is yet here.
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