Tornadoes hit Texas, Oklahoma; more severe weather expected

Residents in mostly rural communities of Texas and Oklahoma have begun cleaning up the damage left behind by tornadoes. As of Thursday morning, there had been no reports of serious injuries or deaths. Several roads and highways were closed Thursday morning in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas because of flash flooding.

“We’ve lost power. It pulled the power lines out of the wall on the outside, so we’re going to have to get all that fixed,” Summer Stanber, a business owner in Seminole, Oklahoma, said Wednesday. “But we got lucky. It didn’t hit us directly.”

Seminole is located about 60 miles southeast of Oklahoma City. While Stanber wasn’t hit directly hit by a tornado, the Academy of Seminole was.

“As the storm hit, it seemed like it lasted forever. And it started to pull the vault door open. My husband and my 15-year-old son held the vault door shut as the tornado was going over,” teacher Tiffani Coker said. “It sounded like a train, and we could also hear glass breaking. And I could hear the metal coming off of the roof.”

In Texas, a “large and dangerous tornado” was spotted Wednesday in the rural community of Lockett. According to the local county sheriff who talked to KAUZ-TV, several homes and barns appeared to sustain extensive damage.

The Wednesday storms were the latest in several rounds of severe weather in the central United States. Back in March, tornadoes killed one and injured more than a dozen others in Texas and Oklahoma. Last week, a tornado damaged more than 1,000 buildings in the Wichita suburb of Andover, Kansas.

“You see it on TV, but you think, until you’re standing here in person thinking, ‘This was my home,’” said Jonelle Farney, whose home was destroyed in last week’s storm. “It’s different. It’s kind of hard to wrap your head around all of that, you know?”

More severe weather was expected Thursday “across parts of the southern Plains, Arklatex, Ozarks and lower to mid Mississippi Valley,” according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

“Damaging wind, hail and a few tornadoes are expected,” the NWS said. “Isolated severe storms are also possible into the Tennessee Valley.”

The threat of severe weather will continue Friday in parts of the South and over the weekend in the central Plains and Midwest, according to the weather service.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.