National Weather Service Warns of More Severe Storms

Shelby Van Sickle tried to salvage personal items from a family home on Monday after tornadoes touched down overnight in Van, Tex. 
CreditLarry W. Smith/European Pressphoto Agency

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑAMAY 11, 2015

The National Weather Service warned of more severe weather Monday from southern Texas to the Great Lakes, a day after tornadoes killed at least four people and left dozens injured in North Texas and Arkansas.

Storm fronts that lashed the nation’s midsection brought dozens of tornadoes, torrential rains and flooding, thunderstorms and lighting strikes, hail, and even unseasonable snows. The worst of the damage appeared to be in North Texas, whereas much as 10 inches of rain fell over the weekend in places, more than in March and April combined.

Dozens of tornadoes were reported across several states, one that ripped through Van, Tex., left two people dead and sending 43 to hospitals with injuries, and at midday Monday eight people were still missing, said Chuck Allen, the Van Zandt County fire marshal and emergency manager. In Van, a town of fewer than 3,000 residents, emergency responders and residents on Monday picked through the remains of buildings that looked like they had been bulldozed.

“We’re easily looking at 50 to 100 homes here in the city that were damaged or destroyed,” Mr. Allen said, adding that the town may have been struck by not one tornado but two, in quick succession. He said the two people who died, whom he did not name, were a husband and wife.

Two of the town’s schools were damaged, and all of them remained closed Monday, as officials worked out a plan to consolidate in the buildings that remained intact.

“It’s a terrible thing for a city to come out like we did, but it’s a great thing the way the people have responded,” Mayor Dean Stone said.

In Nashville, Ark., in the southwestern part of the state, a tornado on Sunday left two people dead — another married couple, whose young daughter survived, officials said. In Lake City, in western Iowa, a tornado tore the roof off a high school while more than 100 people were inside it for an assembly.

A day earlier, a tornado killed a man in Eastland County, Tex., west of Fort Worth.

Serious flooding struck in several states on Sunday; in Denton County, Tex., north of Fort Worth, people were rescued by helicopter from the roofs of cars and houses. The Denver area received several inches of snow Sunday, snow fell in South Dakota and flurries continued in parts of the Plains on Monday.