Storm Barrels Through Tiny Texas Town, Killing at Least 3
A powerful storm struck the northern Texas town of Matador on Wednesday night, killing at least three people, damaging about a dozen buildings and prompting a search for people who might have been injured or trapped by debris, the authorities said.
Matador, which has about 600 residents, is roughly 290 miles northwest of Dallas and was under a tornado warning as the storm barreled through the area around 8 p.m., said William Iwasko, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lubbock, about 80 miles away.
“Based on the damage,’’ he added, “there was most likely a tornado” in Matador, but that has not yet been confirmed.
The mayor of Matador, Pat Smith, who also provides emergency medical services in the town, said in a brief phone interview that at least three people had been killed, that others may be injured and that there was “a whole lot of damage.”
On the west end of Matador, several businesses and homes were destroyed, Mr. Smith said, adding that rescue workers had pulled residents from collapsed houses.
“It’s really, really bad,” Mr. Smith said as emergency crews were heard shouting directions in the background.
The fire department in Lubbock said it was assisting in search and rescue operations in Matador. A livestream of the town from KWTV-DT, a television station in Oklahoma City, appeared to show damaged buildings as strong winds swayed phone lines and trees.
Mr. Smith said that electricity was also out across Matador, the county seat of Motley County. More than 100,000 people were without power across Texas early Thursday morning, according to the site poweroutage.us. That included most of the residents in Motley and two other counties.
The storm hit Matador on a day when a heat dome was stalling over much of Texas and Oklahoma. Officials in Texas issued an excessive heat warning for the Dallas-Fort Worth region. They also asked residents elsewhere in the state to conserve electricity, amid concerns that several days of triple-digit temperatures could strain the power grid.
Thunderstorms moved across Texas and Colorado on Wednesday night, causing the National Weather Service to issue warnings for possible hail and tornadoes. In Morrison, Colo., near Denver, a concert at the outdoor Red Rocks Amphitheater was delayed and then postponed because of severe weather. The local news media reported that dozens of people had been injured when a hailstorm pummeled the venue.
Nearly four million people in Colorado were still under a severe thunderstorm watch early Thursday morning. The National Weather Service said in a forecast that wet weather, including thunderstorms and possible flash flooding, was expected over the next few days across large portions of central United States.
Scientists say that tornadoes seem to be occurring in greater “clusters” in recent years, and that the area of the country known as Tornado Alley, where most tornadoes occur, seems to be shifting eastward.
Last week, a tornado pummeled the Texas town of Perryton, where three people were killed and dozens of mobile homes were mangled. That tornado was part of a ferocious series of storms that swept across the South.
Mike Ives contributed reporting.
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