Video: Tornadoes Hit Oklahoma and Texas as Storms Sweep the South

A line of storms moving across North Texas and parts of Oklahoma and Louisiana spawned several tornadoes on Tuesday, including one near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where passengers were briefly urged to shelter in place and hundreds of flights were delayed.

At least eight people were injured in the storms, which damaged homes and businesses and downed power lines and trees.

The tornadic storms were the lower section of a much larger weather system that was bringing significant, widespread hazards across more than a dozen states in the central United States. Parts of the Plains and Upper Midwest were seeing heavy snow, sleet and ice, with winter and blizzard conditions affecting multiple states.

Late Tuesday afternoon, a number of homes were damaged in a small neighborhood near Four Forks, La., on the border of Texas and Louisiana, local officials said. Three people were missing, and an “unknown” number of people had been injured, said Sgt. Casey Jones, a spokesman with the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office. He said that one woman had been taken to hospital, but that the extent of her injuries were unknown.

Earlier in the day, a tornado touched down in Wise County, Texas, northwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth area at about 7 a.m.There were reports of two injuries and “multiple reports of homes and businesses damaged,” the county’s Office of Emergency Management said in a statement.

One person was injured by flying debris while traveling in their vehicle and treated at the scene, the emergency management office said. The other person was taken to a hospital after high winds overturned an 18-wheeler truck, though the emergency management office did not provide information on the hospitalized person’s condition.

“A confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado was located near Decatur,” according to a bulletin from the National Weather Service, issued at 7:20 a.m. Central time.

Just before 5:30 a.m., a tornado also touched down in Wayne, Okla., and traveled along the ground for at least 3 miles with winds reaching 120 to 125 miles per hour, according to preliminary information from the National Weather Service.

“Multiple” homes were damaged along with outbuildings and barns, and power poles and trees were downed, according to the McClain County Sheriff’s Office, which said there were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths. Utility crews were working to restore power to Wayne and the surrounding area, the sheriff’s office said.

In Texas, the tornado near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport was seen on video, according to the Weather Service, crossing a highway near Grapevine, Texas. The Grapevine Police Department said on Facebook that five people were injured in the storms and had been hospitalized. Amanda McNew, a police department spokeswoman, said that the injuries were minor.

Damage from the storm caused some businesses to close for the day and forced some elementary schools in the area to close early. Students at Grapevine Middle School were evacuated because of roof damage and a water leak on campus.

Airport passengers were asked to shelter in place because of a tornado warning, which was lifted after the storm passed. About 968 flights into and out of the airport were delayed on Tuesday and 93 were canceled, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website.

Outdoor warning sirens blared across Fort Worth at 8:15 a.m. local time. Kristen O’Hara, a spokeswoman for the Fort Worth Fire Department, said that as of 11:15 a.m. local time, there were no reports of structural damage in the city, just downed power lines and trees.

Krystal Foreman, 38, heard tornado sirens after she arrived at her job at the reception of a government insurance company in Arlington, a city east of Fort Worth. Security told employees to find shelter and that the tornado was maybe two to three minutes away from them.

“People were in the stairwell, in the bathroom and a lot of us stayed in a windowless conference room,” she said in an interview.

Ms. Foreman was mostly scared for her three year old son who was sheltering in place at school, according to an email she received.

“The first thing I thought of was my baby and my mother,” Ms. Foreman said. “Once I heard from the school that he was OK, and from my mom, I was good.”

More than 4,400 customers in Texas were without power on Tuesday evening, according to PowerOutage.us, which aggregates data from utility companies across the country.

As this same line of storms from Tuesday morning marches east, the weather system will enter an even more favorable environment for tornadoes to form.

“A corridor of greater supercell and tornado potential appears to exist over northeast Texas and northwest Louisiana,” the prediction center forecasters wrote.

The risk of severe storms will continue throughout the evening and into the overnight hours, with more tornadoes possible in eastern Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

By Wednesday, the threat will move east, likely affecting southern Louisiana and Alabama and putting more populated areas, like New Orleans, at risk for severe weather.

Scientists are not yet able to determine whether or not there is a link between climate change and the frequency or strength of tornadoes. Tornadoes are relatively small, short-lived weather events and, because of that, there is limited historical data on their prevalence in the past; scientists need at least 40 years of weather data before they are able to draw a causal link.

Researchers do say that in recent years tornadoes seem to be occurring in greater “clusters,” and that the area of the country known as Tornado Alley, a region where most tornadoes occur, seems to be shifting eastward.

The timing of tornado seasons is also becoming more unpredictable, researchers have found, with more early and late starts compared with decades ago. The reason for this is unclear.

Isabella Grullón Paz,Michael Levenson and Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting.