AVALON, Texas Giles Street in this rural Ellis County community was without power late Monday night after it was struck by at least one tornado.
Damage was spread out in Avalon, 40 miles south of Dallas. The school district's old gymnasium was damaged, and one home was badly hit when the entire roof blew off.
It started hailing, it started hitting everything, one witness said. There was about three tornadoes that we saw.
Dark clouds quickly spawned trouble.
The clouds was coming north and south and they started rotating, so I grabbed my camcorder, said Don Dotson.
Seconds later, he and his family were running for cover.
Once we knew that the wind picked up and was blowing like 80 mph, shingles started blowing off my shed, we closed the garage door and it looked like it was going to suck the door off, it started shaking real bad, Dotson said.
Before the tornado touched down, more than 50 people huddled inside the town's shelter, a dome at Avalon ISD.
We went to the dome and then all of a sudden people out of nowhere started coming in for shelter, said young storm victim Jerry Salazar.
After more than an hour inside the dome, neighbors walked out to a scene of devastation.
I see that my uncle's roof is gone, and all the wood's all over the streets, power lines down, and trees everywhere... it's pretty bad, one victim said.
The storm left his relatives without a home. The wind ripped off the entire roof.
I felt sad and I started crying. My mom did, too, Emily Salazar said.
And then, neighbors went into action helping one another and grateful that no one was killed.
I'm glad that nobody was home and that they're safe, Emily said.
The Red Cross and the school district were helping the Salazar family deal with the local disaster.
Ellis County emergency management coordinator John Patterson said five people were left homeless in Avalon. School in the Avalon district is canceled on Tuesday, but employees will report for cleanup duty.
The domed shelter cost the district $1 million. The superintendent told News 8 it was worth every penny.
As of late Monday, authorities said they had no reports of storm-related injuries anywhere in the state.
Multiple suspected tornadoes were reported about 9:30 p.m. Monday that ravaged the area in and around the East Texas town of Crockett, about 130 miles north of Houston.
Widespread damage was reported countywide, but the severity was unclear because many affected areas were without power, Houston County Fire Marshal David Lamb said. Many trees also had been blown down, either by tornadoes or straight-line winds, he said.
Earlier in the day, tornadoes were reported as touching down in portions of North Texas, authorities said. The twisters and funnel clouds generated by the afternoon storm were relatively weak, mostly striking open country south of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but there were some reports of damage to a mobile home, metal shed and uprooted trees.
Roofs were damaged and trees blown down near the rural community of Emhouse, 45 miles south of Dallas, said Eric Meyers, Navarro County emergency management coordinator.
Otherwise, reported damage was mostly confined to uprooted trees in Cleburne State Park, about 35 miles southwest of Fort Worth, and broken limbs elsewhere.
Also, strong thunderstorm winds toppled a travel trailer and destroyed a metal shed in Sulphur Springs, about 70 miles northeast of Dallas.
The storms were associated with an atmospheric boundary between moist and dry air and a stationary front that has been oscillating between North Texas and southern Oklahoma.
National Weather Service meteorologist David Huckaby in Fort Worth said the storm was cyclical, meaning that as one end was losing strength, the other end was regenerating. That kept the storm raging all afternoon long until after sunset, when the heat that fueled it was lost.
However, Huckaby said more of the same was expected Tuesday in North Texas.
At least two funnels that formed briefly, then dissipated, were televised live from news helicopters flying in open country south and southwest of Dallas-Fort Worth.
The first televised funnel formed briefly around midafternoon Monday about 30 miles southwest of Fort Worth, between Cleburne and Glen Rose. It was unclear how long it was on the ground, but spotters reported that it touched down briefly. A thin, rope-like funnel was later seen near Itasca, about 50 miles southwest of Dallas.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
E-mail mdiaz@wfaa.com
