Early morning storm destroys two structures

Wed, 03/13/2019 - 6:20 pm

This trailer at the corner of Clayton Street and FM 1191 South in Bryson was turned over by winds during early morning storms Wednesday.
A fence on a property at the corner of Clayton and Chambers streets caught the street sign and a tree.
A crew repairs power lines in Bryson. Early morning storms Wednesday caused widespread outages throughout the county including in Bryson, Perrin and Jacksboro.

Jack County Emergency Management Coordinator Frank Hefner said early morning storms Wednesday caused damage throughout the county but Bryson got the brunt of it.

“We’ve had a long night,” said Hefner. “It seems like the damage is more in the Bryson area than anywhere else.”

The National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning for several counties including Jack from 2:05 a.m. until 4:15 a.m. According to Monique Sellers, NWS meteorologist, the damage was caused by straight-line winds ranging from 65 to 80 mph.

“That is consistent with EF 0 to an EF 1 tornado, but we have not found any evidence of tornadic activity,” Sellers said. “We’ve gone through and done some in-depth analysis and it was just straight-line winds, no tornadoes.”

But the winds took their toll.

“We’ve got power poles down, roofs blown off, a couple of trailer houses turned upside down and destroyed,” Hefner said of the damage in Bryson. “There’s debris, limbs, signs down, debris everywhere.”

He said there were no injuries as a result of the damage. The houses destroyed were unoccupied.

The community of Perrin also experienced some damage. Hefner reported a barn destroyed on Tucker Road and more.

“On Shawver Road, there’s a tank battery that rolled across the highway and took down a bunch of fence and on Cranford Road they had some power poles down,” he said.

Jacksboro Fire Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator Jeremy Jennings said he had not received any reports of damage within Jacksboro as of early Wednesday afternoon and had only seen some limbs down around town.

Sellers said the storm cut a large path of destruction.

“We’ve had reports of damage as far north as the Red River and as far south as the Waco area,” she said.

The forecast for the next few days is more peaceful.

“It’s going to be pretty dry, clear and quiet,” Sellers said. “It will be a little cooler. Starting tomorrow night, temperatures are going to go down. For the next five to six days it’s going to be pretty quiet. We’ll see the wind speeds begin to come down tonight to the 10-15 mph range overnight and by tomorrow morning down to 10 mph.”