(NEWSnet/AP) – Severe weather that included tornado warnings and baseball-sized hail pummeled part of Texas Tuesday morning, and the death count continues to rise from a widespread tornado outbreak during the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

There are now 25 confirmed fatalities from a blast of severe weather during the Memorial Day holiday weekend, according to the latest news reports. Those deaths were reported in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia.

Widespread power outages were reported in Dallas and Fort Worth, where an oppressive heat wave pushing into triple digits added to the misery. Nearly 800,000 customers lacked electricity by mid-day Tuesday, according to PowerOutage.us, a significant increase from the morning.

Voters in the Texas’s runoff elections found some polling places without power. Roughly 100 voting sites in Dallas County were knocked offline. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins declared a disaster area and noted that some nursing homes were using generators. “This ultimately will be a multi-day power outage situation,” Jenkins said Tuesday.

In response to the latest storms, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he was granted permission to add four more counties to a recent Presidential Disaster Declaration, which sets into motion Federal Emergency Management Agency relief efforts.

A possible tornado also damaged a high school and a half-dozen homes in Pennsylvania on Monday night. No injuries were reported, but school was canceled in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, said David Truskowsky, spokesperson for the city’s fire department.

2024 Tornado Season

 

Late May is the peak of tornado season, but the recent storms have been exceptionally violent, producing very strong tornadoes, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University.

“Over the weekend, we’ve had a lot of hot and humid air, a lot of gasoline, a lot of fuel for these storms. And we’ve had a really strong jet stream as well. That jet stream has been aiding in providing the wind shear necessary for these types of tornadoes,” Gensini said.

Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, said a persistent pattern of warm, moist air is to blame for the string of tornadoes over the past two months.

Nearly every day since April 25 has seen a tornado reported somewhere across the country, according to NWS data. 

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