Thousands of utility crews have canvassed large swaths of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas battered by recent severe weather. Scattered power outages are expected to linger for a few more days in parts of East Texas. At one point, more than a million customers lost power. An estimated 184,000 customers were still without power by mid-Thursday, according PowerOutage.us. Some of those areas included parts of Rusk, Nacogdoches, Angelina, Polk, and Smith Counties.
This all comes after a deadly Memorial Day weekend that killed 24 people in seven states. Associated Press Correspondent Donna Warder reports that another burst of severe weather ripped the roofs of homes, uprooted trees and flooded streets in parts of Texas. A 16-year-old boy was killed at a construction site while working on a home that collapsed.
Forecaster David Roth of the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland says, especially for Texas, the concern is potentially several more days of rain. “That seems to be the big concern. I mean, severe weather does kill people, but flash flooding still kills more.” Flooding and damage in Houston has come just weeks after widespread storms, associated with rapidly moving rain showers and thunderstorms that have left at least eight people dead and knocked out electricity to hundreds of thousands of home s and businesses.
