Important Takeaways:

• Powerful storms unloaded flooding rainfall that swept away vehicles and triggered evacuations, delivered hail the size of softballs and spun up at least one damaging tornado in Texas Thursday.
• Dozens of tornadoes have hit from the Panhandle to the Gulf coast and months of rain has fallen in East Texas in intense spurts, causing rivers to rise to levels not seen since the devastating floods of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
• Mandatory evacuations were ordered Thursday in parts of Harris County
• “We want you out of this area… this is a life-threatening situation,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said at a news conference.
• Mandatory evacuations due to flooding were also ordered for parts of San Jacinto County and Polk County, with voluntary evacuations for Montgomery County.
• Several more sites are forecast to experience major flooding by the weekend and could meet or exceed record levels set during Harvey.
• A “large and extremely dangerous” tornado impacted the towns of Hodges and Hawley – about 10 miles north of Abilene – Thursday evening.

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