‘You Never Think It’s Your House. Until It Is’: 5 Likely Tornadoes Leave Wake Of Damage In Central Texas – San Antonio Express-News

“I didn’t think it could be my house,” he said. “You never think it’s your house. Until it is.”

On ExpressNews.com: PHOTOS — Tornadoes rip through Texas

By the time Holcomb got there, 20 minutes after the tornado warning alert, his home was a mangled mess of drywall, insulation, wiring and wood. His dogs were hiding in a laundry room, terrified but unharmed.

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Holcomb’s property was in the path of one of five likely tornadoes that touched down in Central Texas on Monday evening during a weather event whose severity is seen once every 15 or 20 years here, forecasters said.

It’s unclear how many people were injured during the storms, which prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to declare an emergency in 16 Texas counties. The National Weather Service had four teams out Tuesday morning surveying damage in five places.

One likely tornado, which ripped through Round Rock, leveled hundreds of homes and businesses. Photos and videos posted on social media show intense destruction, with several neighborhoods nearly flattened and entire roofs tumbling down streets.

One video posted on social media shows a large funnel cloud barreling toward people running for cover in a Walmart parking lot in Round Rock. A video of a separate tornado in nearby Elgin shows a pickup getting tossed around inside a tornado before driving away, seemingly unscathed.

On Tuesday, the NWS teams went to the Round Rock/Granger area near Austin, the town of Jarrell along the Interstate 35 corridor between Austin and Waco, the towns of Elgin and Giddings east of Austin, Kingsbury and Seguin east of San Antonio, and Canyon Lake and Wimberley in northern Hays County.

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The weather service has not confirmed the tornadoes or how strong they were on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which can range from EF0 on the low end to EF5 on the violent end.

Andrew Quigley, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Austin-San Antonio region, said tornado damage assessments are still preliminary and that it will take several days to determine the twisters’ exact paths and rankings on the EF scale.

“Our crews are investigating what the damage looks like and talking to people who were impacted, so they can get an idea of what was happening as the event actually unfolded,” Quigley said.

Line of storms

Meteorologists at NWS Austin-San Antonio had been warning people since Sunday of a severe weather event that was possible for Central Texas along the I-35 corridor Monday. Forecasters predicted a disturbance that could produce severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, damaging hail and winds, lightning and heavy rainfall.

But where the storms formed surprised even seasoned forecasters, who said Monday’s severe weather was a 15- or 20-year event.

Quigley said the cells began forming along the U.S. 281 corridor between 3:30 and 4 p.m. and moved east and northeast along the I-35 corridor right as the 5 o’clock rush hour began.

It wasn’t until the storms made it to I-35 that they began to get severe, and that’s when weather radar began indicating that rotations were happening all along the line of thunderstorms as they pushed their way northeast.

“It was uncharacteristic in terms of where the storms formed,” said Quigley, who noted that this time of year it’s typical for such severe storms to form in the higher terrains of Mexico and travel across the Rio Grande into Texas — not along U.S. 281.

The last time there was such a significant tornado event in Central Texas in March was in the early 2000s, Quigley said. Nevertheless, severe weather is relatively common in the area during the spring and summer months.

“We get severe weather in late February through May and early June. That’s part of life in South and Central Texas,” Quigley said. “But it is rare to see storms form along the 281 corridor.”

Victims in shock

In Kingsbury, Precinct 1 Constable James Springer said it’s a miracle nobody in Guadalupe County died after Monday night’s storms.

At least two dozen homes in the county were damaged in the tornado, five of which were destroyed.

“There are mobile homes completely torn off their foundations, houses with large holes in them and twisted RVs,” he said.

Emergency crews in Guadalupe County responded to one home where a man’s roof had been ripped off. The man was sitting in his bed unharmed, waiting for help.

The American Red Cross sent out help to families who lost their homes in the storms. Tuesday morning, a Red Cross truck was parked in Holcomb’s driveway, where he stood with his wife and their dogs, looking at the mangled mess that just 24 hours prior was their home. They’d spent the night with friends.

His wife couldn’t speak much — she was still in shock — but for Holcomb, reality was setting in.

“Now that we kind of know what the problem is, it’s time to start working on a remedy,” he said. “Time to get to work.”

Annie Blanks writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. annie.blanks@express-news.net.