Extent of damage, number of Texas tornadoes unclear, NWS says

­With several short-lived tornadoes touching down along the I-35 corridor from San Antonio to the greater Austin metro area, sparking memories of 2017 when several tornadoes touched down around the Alamo City and ravaged neighborhood streets, there’s some back and forth on whether Bexar County and San Antonio fall within tornado alley. It’s something public officials are wary to put a stamp of approval or denial on.

However, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service says tornadoes touching down during rainstorms along the interstate is not unprecedented. Meteorologist Paul Yura said it’s fairly common for whirls of wind to pick up speed during heavy rain events in Central Texas, but he said it remains unclear exactly how many tornadoes touched down between San Antonio and Austin Thursday morning, October 26.

“Overall, we see this quite often here in this part of Texas,” Tura told MySA in the middle of the agency’s operations around the reported tornadoes. “We’ll get some rain showers and even some very weak thunderstorms that sometimes get rotation. And sometimes, not often, but at least occasionally, we’ll get some of those to actually spin up small, little tornadoes. So, it’s not unprecedented.”

Yura said this has happened several times over the past decade in the greater San Antonio-Austin area where very weak tornadoes split up, but he said there wasn’t any expectation of a tornado outbreak like back in 2017. With several videos of tornadoes circulating around the internet suggesting the whipping wind tunnels touched down in San Antonio and Caldwell County’s Mustang Ridge, as well as areas between Lockhart and Niederwald, the NWS has yet to confirm just how many tornadoes touched down in Central Texas. Yura said the agency is simply relying on those same videos to assess the situation.

“Until we get out and do official surveys, all we kind of know right now is some of the videos that we’re seeing,” Yura said. “We’ll know more over the next couple of days when we get some folks out and are able to fairly determine how many there were and the path length and the strength of then — that kind of thing. [The investigation] is ongoing until we can get out.”

It also remains unclear how strong any of these brief tornadoes were or how much damage they did in total. Lora Lopez with the Texas Department of Transportation said no accidents or damage to Texas highways have been reported as of Thursday afternoon, but videos and images from a tornado that landed just outside of Fort Sam Houston on San Antonio’s near Eastside shows just how much damage a quick touchdown can do.

“We typically go out and we look to see where the damage starts and where it ends,” Yura said of the weather agencies plan of action once the tornadoes stop touching down. “We try to get a path length, and then from there we look at the types of damage that we have and try to put a wind estimate into it. That will determine what strength of tornado we think may have occurred.”

“In general, if you suspect any damage to your home, shut off electrical power, natural gas, and propane tanks to avoid fire, electrocution, or explosions,” the county site reads. “If you see frayed wiring or sparks, or if there is an odor of something burning, you should immediately shut off the electrical system at the main circuit breaker if you have not done so already.”

Luckily for those impacted by the San Antonio tornado touchdown, Joe Arrington, public information officer for the San Antonio Fire Department, said there were no emergency calls from the high speed winds that took down power lines and split trees in half. However, San Antonio Public Works employees could be seen chopping up massive fallen limbs and loading them up from city streets.