Strong Storms Blow Through, Leave Damage in its Wake

A complex of showers and storms rolled through East Texas this afternoon, producing wind gusts on the order of 50 to 60 mph, along with small hail, and lots of dangerous cloud-to-ground lightning strikes.
These storms originated in Louisiana and moved in a westerly direction, a little bit unusual, considering most of our storm systems track from west to east, not the other way around. As this disturbance tapped into temperatures well over 100 degrees, there was plenty of fuel and heat energy to allow these storms to strengthen and become severe. The ridge of hot, high pressure which was firmly in control of our weather, shifted off to the northeast just slightly today. While it may not seem like a big deal, it was enough of a difference to allow those disturbances to our east to roll in and not weaken. With the severe weather rolling through, we had numerous power outages, most noteable in the Diboll and Huntington communities.

This graphic to the left pinpoints all of the severe weather reports that have been confirmed as of 7:45 this evening. Each blue dot represents a report of wind damage. Notice the blue dot in Angelina county, just east of the Lufkin text. That was the storm that blew through the Zavalla, Huntington, and Diboll areas that knocked out power. We also had several more wind damage reports scattered across the East Texas viewing area this afternoon.

If you have any reports of severe weather, we'd love to hear from you. Let us know what's going on in your neighborhood by emailing us at weather@ktre.com, or calling our weather line at 936-853-2909.