NWS confirms 7 tornadoes touched down as storms ripped through Southeast Texas

MADISONVILLE, Texas — The National Weather Service has confirmed reports of seven tornadoes touched down as storms tore through Southeast Texas late Monday into early Tuesday.

Teams from the NWS’ Houston office have been surveying damage in the hardest hit areas.

The tornadoes range in strength from EF-0 to EF-2 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. That is the scale used to assign a rating based on estimated wind speeds and related damage.

Preliminary March 21-22 storm survey information so far indicates:

• EF-1 tornado in Madisonville (Madison County)
• EF-2 tornado (approximately 125 mph winds) in Crockett area – Houston County
• EF-1 tornado in Beasley area in Fort Bend County near Burnett and Battle Road
• EF-0 tornado in the Snook area (Burleson County)
• EF-0 tornado between College Station and Snook (Burleson County)
• EF-1 tornado in the Bryan – Saxon Road area (eastern Brazos County)
• EF-0 tornado in Danbury (Brazoria County, outside Angleton)

One EF-1 tornado touched down in Madisonville while an EF-2 hit the city of Crockett.

RELATED: Tornado touches down in Madisonville, Texas, causing extensive damage

Residents in Madisonville are now in recovery mode. The town was devastated by a tornado that destroyed a number of businesses and homes in the area.

Mike Gutowski was asleep when his wife franticly woke him up.

“Like, ‘Wake up. I think something hit your car,'” Gutowski said. “Well, that car is my baby.”

Gutowski’s initial disappointment from his car’s misfortune changed after looking at the tornado damage down the street.

“Actually got kind of lucky because we have another car. Our house is intact,” Gutowski said. “Them people don’t have a house to live in.”

Brant Smith lives in one of the homes Gutowski is talking about. He was home as the tornado touched down.

“It was what you see on the news,” Smith said. “You think it’s never going to happen to you. Then it will.”

He was barbecuing pork chops up until the last minute. Smith said he got lucky and so did a lot of other people.

“Everybody’s OK…and I don’t see how …by the Grace of God, I reckon,” Smith said.

Folks in the town of Crockett are dealing with the damage from a tornado and severe thunderstorms between Monday night and early Tuesday morning.

Tuesday afternoon, the National Weather Service confirmed an EF-2 tornado touched down in the east Houston County community, about 115 miles northeast of Houston.

RELATED: Drone 11 video: Daylight shows extent of severe damage in Crockett, Texas after EF-2 tornado hits

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed 10 people were injured, at least one severely, in the Crockett area, according to an early assessment. Thirty structures including 20 to 25 homes were damaged. Dozens of residents had to seek shelter elsewhere.

As the sun rose Tuesday, the extent of the damage was more clear. Air 11 flew over Crockett and saw homes and businesses destroyed, smashed vehicles, an overturned 18-wheeler, a boat lifted to dry land, uprooted trees and debris everywhere.

A team sent to assess the damage Tuesday confirmed the EF-2 tornado that barreled through Crockett. Jeff Evans said they look at the radar and the damage to determine the strength of a tornado.

“Some of it is the environment and looking at the radar, but when you come out here, you can see the way the damage is laying,” Evans said. “A tornado is like a giant straw. It sucks things in, so the damage tends to fall inward toward the path, so that’s one big key. With straight lines, they kinda lay down flat and maybe diverge a little bit.”

One resident put it in perspective.

“But at the end of the day, if we can sit here and stand here and talk to you, we’re extremely blessed,” Ansel Bradshaw said.

A mother and child were injured after a mobile home they were in flipped over by a tornado, according to the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office.

The two were rescued and rushed to a nearby hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

RELATED: Mother and child rescued after EF-1 tornado flips mobile home in Beasley, FBCSO says

FBCSO said the trailer flipped over on the roadway around the same time a suspected tornado was on the ground with heavy rainfall.

It happened just before 7 a.m. Tuesday near the intersection of Burnett and Battle Road in Beasley. 

Adolophine Castillo and her son live next door.

“You know, we had never been through that,” she told us. “So it was really scary it happened here and our neighbors were involved.”

Castillo said a deputy told her the trailer flipped several times.

Douglas Davidson said he knows the family inside, and they’re expected to be okay. 

“I was kind of surprised to see all the damage, the trailers flipped over and so forth,” Davidson said. “It’s a miracle — looking at all the damage and what occurred there — it’s a miracle no one was severely hurt.”

A second nearby home was found damaged but those residents weren’t hurt. 

“I think it was a tornado,” Davidson said. “I see a house around the street, a brick house, where all the bricks blown off and see a lot of split trees.” 

The National Weather Service sent a team to Beasley to assess the damage and they confirmed it was an EF-1 tornado. They use a radar and the pattern of the damage to determine the strength of the storm.

According to the National Weather Service, the Enhanced Fujita Scale or EF Scale, which became operational on February 1, 2007, is used to assign a tornado a ‘rating’ based on estimated wind speeds and related damage. When tornado-related damage is surveyed, it is compared to a list of damage indicators and degrees of damage which help estimate better the range of wind speeds the tornado likely produced. From that, a rating is assigned.