HOUSTON, Texas - A line of severe thunderstorms swept through southeastern Texas and Louisiana on Thursday, leaving at least four people dead and over 1.5 million power customers without electricity. The storm brought destructive winds that reached up to 100 mph in some areas, causing widespread damage to buildings, power lines, and trees.
In Houston alone, the Harris County Sheriff's Office reported at least four fatalities due to the storm. One person was killed by a falling tree in the city's Montrose area. Another person died when a crane toppled over during high winds near Bridgeland, and two people were found dead in separate mobile home fires in Harris and Montgomery counties.
The National Weather Service confirmed that tornadoes touched down near Cypress and Galena Park, adding to the destruction caused by the storm. Downtown Houston was hit particularly hard with damaging winds that shattered windows of high-rise buildings and scattered debris on the streets.
PowerOutage.us reported that over 800,000 customers in Harris County lost power due to the storm, but with nearby counties also dealing with outages, the state's tally climbed to well over 1 million customers at the storm's peak. CenterPoint Energy reported that it could take several days for power to be fully restored.
City leaders implored non-essential downtown workers to stay home on Friday and asked business owners to be flexible with employee absences due to the broken glass and debris. Ground stops were issued at both Bush Intercontinental Airport and Houston William P. Hobby Airport due to gusts reaching 62 mph at both airports, with a gust of 71 mph clocked in College Station and 65 mph in Cypress.
The Harris County School District closed all public schools on Friday and said they would reopen Monday. Dangerous heat is expected to return this weekend into next week, leaving the hundreds of thousands still without power with the daunting reality that they may not have air conditioning.
The line of severe thunderstorms continued their march across the Gulf Coast Thursday night into early Friday morning, leaving a trail of wind damage and power outages in Louisiana and Florida.