The wild weather from Thursday night has settled into an airy and sunny Friday, but the aftermath is a completely different matter.
Last night, just as the wind was really starting to pick up, the power went out at my home in North Dallas. Then the sirens went off. My husband, kid, dog and I settled into the linen closet and watched the weather while updating the weather forecast on this website using my phone.
I was one of 262,433 customers without power, but thankfully, by midnight or so, it was restored. By 2pm today, Oncor had reduced that figure to 37,035.
This morning I went to Blair Elementary in Pleasant Grove to do two of my favorite things: read a book and visit a Dallas ISD campus, courtesy of an invitation from accounting firm EY and the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas’ Reading Day. My fifth grade assistant told me that this morning one of his neighbors had several trees down in their yard, but that his family was fine, but had also lost power. The school was up and running thanks to a generator, but the rest of the neighborhood was also waiting for crews to restore power.
The wind was the biggest factor, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said Friday. A major storm line stretching from College Station to Oklahoma marched east Thursday afternoon and evening, reaching the Dallas area around 10 p.m. 6 p.m. and issued a tornado warning until 7:00 PM in Dallas County.
The NWS said wind gusts of up to 76 mph were detected at Love Field, and blasts as high as 80 were found in the Blue Mound area, roughly equivalent to the wind speeds of an EF0 tornado.
On social media, videos captured what could be tornadoes in several areas, including Roanoke, Balch Springsand Northlake. There was also considerable damage in Little Elm. So far, the NWS has not confirmed any tornadoes in DFW, but about an hour and a half away in Pickton, a confirmed tornado damaged about 20 homes.
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Bethany Erickson
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Bethany Erickson is a senior digital editor for D Magazine. She has written about real estate, education policy, the stock market and crime throughout her career, and sometimes all at the same time. She hates lima beans and 5 a.m. and takes SAT practice tests for fun.
