Catherine Rusoff
A tornado destroyed homes and downed trees and power lines when it hit a small town in northeastern Oklahoma, one of the several twisters that broke out in the central United States amidst a series of powerful storms.
The tornado hit the town of Barnsdall, population 1,000, about a 40-minute drive north of Tulsa, on Monday night. The nearby city of Bartlesville was also “directly hit” by a funnel, according to Washington County Emergency Director Kary Cox..
Stephen Nehrenz, meteorologist for CBS Tulsa affiliate KOTV, said on social media Monday night that: “The Hampton Inn in Bartlesville was hit by tonight’s tornado. They are reported to have lost most of the roof of the building . So far, it seems like almost everyone there is okay from what we initially heard.”
Police and residents inspected the damage in a Barnsdall neighborhood as lightning struck and heavy rain fell, local TV news footage showed. The tornado ripped the roof off a house before throwing it back onto the street. Osage County Sheriff Eddie Virden told KOTV there were no confirmed deaths as of 11 p.m. local time.
The station said cited Osage County Emergency Management as saying there were confirmed reports of numerous injuries and widespread damage. OCEM said many people are believed to be trapped in their homes and that downed power lines and concerns about possible gas leaks are hampering the response. County officials are working to clear the roads.
Search and rescue efforts were underway on the Osage Nation Reservation, authorities said.
About 28,000 homes and businesses were in the dark in Oklahoma at 3:30 a.m. local time.
The National Weather Service in Tulsa warned early in the evening that “a large, life-threatening tornado” was headed toward Barnsdall, with wind gusts of up to 70 mph. Meteorologist Brad McGavock said information about the size of the tornado and the distance it traveled was not immediately available Monday night.
The storms began on Monday morning with gusty winds and rain. But after dark, tornadoes were spotted skirting northern Oklahoma. At one point in the evening, a storm in the small town of Covington “produced intermittent tornadoes for more than an hour,” the National Weather Service said. Across the area, wind farm turbines spun rapidly in the wind and blinding rain.
In Kansas, some areas were hit by apple-sized hail measuring 3 inches in diameter.
The storms hit Oklahoma while areas like Sulfur and Holdenville were still recovering from a tornado that killed four and left thousands without power late last month. Both the Plains and the Midwest have been hit by tornadoes this spring.
The Oklahoma State Emergency Operations Center, which coordinates storm response from a bunker near the state capital, Oklahoma City, was still activated from last weekend’s deadly storms.
The weather service said more than 3.4 million people, 1,614 schools and 159 hospitals in Oklahoma, parts of southern Kansas and far north Texas faced the most severe tornado threat on Monday.
Monte Tucker, a farmer and rancher from the western Oklahoma town of Sweetwater, spent Monday putting some of his tractors and heavy equipment in barns to protect them from the hail. He said he warned his neighbors they could come to his house if the weather turned dangerous.
“We built a house 10 years ago, and my stubborn wife put her foot down and made sure we built a safe room,” Tucker said. He said the entire ground floor room was built with reinforced concrete walls.
Oklahoma and Kansas were under a high-risk weather warning on Monday.
Bill Bunting, deputy director of the Storm Prediction Center, said such a warning from the center is not something seen every day or every spring.
“It’s the highest threat level we can assign,” he said.
The last time it was issued was March 31, 2023, when a massive storm system hit parts of the South and Midwest, including Arkansas, Illinois and rural Indiana.
The increased risk is due to an unusual confluence: Winds gusting up to about 75 mph were blowing across Colorado’s populated Front Range region, including the Denver area, on Monday.
The winds were being created by a low pressure system north of Colorado that was also pulling moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, increasing the risk of severe weather in the Plains, according to the National Weather Service office in the Denver area.
Colorado was not at risk for tornadoes or storm surge.
The whole week is looking stormy in the US. The eastern U.S. and South are expected to bear the brunt of the severe weather throughout the rest of the week, including Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville, St. Louis and Cincinnati, cities where more than 21 million people live. It should be clear by the weekend.
About that, flooding in the Houston area began to ease on Monday after days of heavy rain in southeast Texas left neighborhoods flooded and led to hundreds of high-water rescues.
