Houston weather: Storms leave homes damaged, fallen trees, plane flipped, power outages
HOUSTON - Strong storms toppled trees and caused hundreds of thousands of customers to lose power on Wednesday night across the Houston area.
Several Southeast Texas counties were under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until 11 p.m., and severe thunderstorm warnings were issued as the storms moved through the area.
TRACKER: Power outages across the Houston area
Nearly 374,000 customers lost power on Wednesday night, with many of the outages concentrated to the north of Houston.
In those areas, including north Harris County and Montgomery County, clean up was under way on Thursday morning to remove toppled trees from roadways and neighborhoods.
The Woodlands Fire Department clears a fallen tree. (Photo: Woodlands Fire Department)
The Montgomery County Fire Marshals Office says dispatchers coordinated responses to 422 calls for service between 6 p.m. and midnight as lightning strikes damaged buildings and winds uprooted trees, damaging power and gas lines.
The Woodlands Fire Department responds to a tree fallen into a home. (Photo: Woodlands Fire Department)
Officials say firefighters from all over Montgomery County responded to several reports of trees that had fallen on homes and fires from broken gas lines or damaged electrical equipment.
SkyFOX aerials showed a massive tree fallen onto a home on Old Ox Road in south Montgomery County.
Another large tree fell into the street in the Candlelight Hills subdivision in the Spring area.
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At Hooks Airport, a small plane was flipped upside down. The airport is located to the southeast of Tomball, where a 62 mph wind gust was reported.
A plane flipped over at Hooks Airport near Tomball.
At Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, a 97 mph wind gust was observed. According to the National Weather Service in Houston, that is the highest gust ever recorded at that site since observations began in 1969.
There could be isolated strong storms Thursday and Friday, but it doesn't look as severe.
Once the weekend hits, we'll see our "heat dome" of high pressure getting larger and spreading across Texas, so a large-scale heat wave is on the way next week state-wide.