By: Nina He
Did you know that around 75% of the world’s tornadoes happen in the United States?
Just yesterday, on June 17th, a tornado happened in Perryton, Texas. Governor Greg Abbot paid Perryton a visit. After the tornado, an estimated 1,000 people were left without electricity and three died; two women and an 11-year-old boy.
The Perryton Ochiltree Chamber of Commerce has announced they will open a cooling center in the middle of the town of 8,000 people, 155 miles northeast of Amarillo to counteract the high temperatures after the tornado.
Meanwhile, in the local hospital with just 25 beds, doctors and nurses took care of 160 patients.
“At times of events like these, Texans come together,” Abbott told reporters, signing a disaster declaration that would “trigger all the resources the state can bring to bear to accelerate the ability to rebuild.”
Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said that more bad weather was coming late Saturday, which might bring another tornado.
That isn’t all, The National Weather Service put heat warnings throughout the Gulf Coast from Brownsville, Texas, to Houston. It warned of heat indexes ranging from 115º to 120º. More cooling shelters were set up in cities along the coast that had no electricity.
Allison Prater, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth, Texas, said, “What’s really going on is the humidity. That’s making the heat index, or the ‘feels like’ temperature really skyrocket.”
Prater said that the temperature in Dallas on Saturday could reach up to 94º, but humidity could make it feel like 105º.
“The reason we’re having such heat is there is a lot of moisture being pulled up from the Gulf of Mexico,” Prater said. “That’s working with the warmer temperatures to induce…that ‘feels like’ temperature.”
Ochiltree County Sheriff Terry Bounchard said that missing people from the tornado had been located.
“It dropped down right on top of Perryton,” he said. “We’ve lost a lot of homes, businesses, rental properties. There’s just a lot of damage to our community and it’s going to take some time to get this cleaned up.”
Across the south, many areas are experiencing near-apocalyptic conditions. Power outages were also reported from East Texas late Friday. In Louisiana, daytime weather were reported to be 94º and heat index values as high as 114º. In Florida, Clearwater officials said that a waterspout came ashore and sent beach-related items flying, hurting two people from Kansas: a 70-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man. Their identities are not public.
In Miami, the National Weather Service in Miami issued a heat advisory through 7 p.m. Daytime on Saturday’s “feels like” temperature was 105º.
“Hot temperatures and high humidity may cause heat illnesses to occur,” the service reported. The temperature in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, might reach up to about 92º.