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By Elisha Fieldstadt and Tim Stelloh
Dozens of counties across Texas and Oklahoma were under the most severe tornado warning Monday after a weekend full of twisters that tore roofs off houses and ripped power lines from the ground.
Most of Oklahoma, northwest Texas and the eastern Texas Panhandle should brace for numerous, intense, long-track tornadoes, hurricane-force winds and baseball-size hail, the National Weather Service, or NWS, warned Monday afternoon.
The National Weather Service pleaded for people to take cover after a large tornado was spotted near the city of Mangum, southwest of Oklahoma City, on Monday afternoon.
Twenty minutes later, the agency reported another twister had formed in the nearby town of Granite.
“This event is NOT over,” the National Weather Service tweeted.
It wasn’t immediately clear if there were injuries or damage, but a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma, said earlier that the storm could be dire.
“We’re underway with watches and warnings in what will be a non-stop 24 to 36 hour onslaught of severe storms, flooding and tornadoes,” said the meteorologist, Rick Smith. “Many of us will get multiple rounds of severe weather, and flooding will be disastrous for some.”
Kansas and Arkansas can also expect tornadoes Monday, along with damaging hail, strong wind gusts and torrential rain, according to the NWS.
Parts of the southern Plains can expect 2 to 3 inches of rain per hour leading to flash flooding Monday, forecasters said. More than 10 million people are under flash flood warnings.
As many as 67 tornadoes were reported from Friday to Sunday in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas and Nebraska.
The storms and extreme weather warnings fall on the sixth anniversary of the tornado that tore through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore in 2013, killing 24 people and injuring 212 others.
The precautions also come just a few days before the eighth anniversary of the tornado that devastated the town of Joplin, Missouri, in 2011. The Joplin tornado, which killed 158 people and injured more than 1,000 others, is the deadliest since modern record keeping began in 1950 and is ranked seventh among the deadliest tornadoes in U.S. history, according to the NWS.
