Tornadoes Strike Texas and Louisiana, Thousands Left Without Power

Tornadoes struck multiple communities across the states of Texas and Louisiana, leaving thousands of homes and businesses without electricity.

The tornado outbreak is caused by a large-scale winter storm that threatened the South US and Midwest.

In addition to power outages, the twisters caused widespread damage and injuries with no reported fatalities so far.

The severe thunderstorm responsible for spawning the tornadoes is caused by a weather system in the form of a winter storm that is moving across the US.

Despite being in the middle of the winter season, a twister outbreak is still possible since the storm involved generated severe weather, which served as a fuel for the swirling vortex of air to occur.

Tornado Outbreak

At least 14 tornadoes spawned across southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana as of 9:00 p.m. ET (local time) on Tuesday, January 24, CNN reported.

This comes as the multi-day storm threatened the southern states as it moves in a northeastward pattern and is expected to impact large parts of the country this week.

In Louisiana, nearly 16,000 homes and businesses lost power by early morning on Wednesday, January 25.

In Texas, almost 42,000 customers lost electricity by Wednesday morning, according to the utility tracking website PowerOutage.us.

Tornado Alert

The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) recently issued a tornado watch for southeastern Alabama and the central-eastern parts of Florida Panhandle.

The SPC previously predicted that strong thunderstorms will move through the region by Wednesday morning; wherein it confirmed the recent occurrence of isolated tornadoes and damaging wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour, as cited by CNN.

Earlier this week, the storm caused extensive damage to the Houston area communities of Deer Park and Pasadena, where downed trees and power lines caused a massive power outage that affected thousands of residents.

Pasadena Mayor Jeff Wagner stated they have seen a lot of damage and buildings that have collapsed, as cited by the US media company.

Extreme weather struck Texas on Tuesday as millions of people across the US are under winter weather alerts, the BBC reported.

Witnesses reportedly described the scene in Houston area as chaotic as tornadoes targeted businesses and smashed windows.

What is a Tornado?

In the US, tornadoes are common and this is specially the case during a severe thunderstorm or severe storm.

Over the past year, twisters have been responsible for causing multiple deaths across the Central US and Southern US.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a tornado is a rotating column of air that extends from a thunderstorm to towards the ground, adding tornadoes can be some of the most violent natural phenomena out of all atmospheric storms that we experience.

Aside from the US, tornadoes occur in other parts of the world, including in Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America.

Even New Zealand has recorded around 20 tornadoes each year, with two of the highest tornado outbreaks outside the US being in Argentina and Bangladesh, the NOAA adds.