Power Outage in Reklaw, TX

Power lines were downed in Reklaw.

An EF-3 tornado with maximum estimated winds near 160 mph that originally touched down in Houston County about 9 miles northeast of Crockett crossed the Neches River into Southwest Cherokee County, where it snapped and uprooted thousands of trees along its path. The tornado paralleled Highway 21 before reaching the city of Alto, where it severely damaged or destroyed approximately 20 homes. Included along the damage path southwest of Alto was the Caddo Mounds Sate Historic Site building, which had its roof torn off, nearly all of its exterior walls removed, and was left to only a few interior rooms in the building. Several people were outside running to get inside for safety when the building was destroyed, resulting in one fatality and a number of serious injuries. Multiple cars in the parking lot were thrown 150 yards into trees and across Highway 21. The tornado then went on to lift and destroy a double wide mobile home, throwing it 50 yards. As the tornado continued along Highway 21, its most significant damage was at a single family home and the St. Thomas Chapel which saw their roofs and exterior walls collapsed. Winds were estimated at 150 mph at this point. ||As the tornado neared Alto, it destroyed three homes along Highway 294 and Singletary Street, recording high end EF-3 damage as it wiped the lower level of a two story home off of its foundation and left the top story of the home 20 yards away from the foundation. This damage was reviewed by tornado damage experts from the National Weather Service (NWS) Southern Region Headquarters, NWS Norman, and the Warning Decision Training Division who all agreed it was high end EF-3 damage (with maximum estimated winds near 160 mph) based off how the home walls were separated from the bolts which anchored them to the foundation. Surrounding damage indicators also validated the EF-3 tornado determination. ||The storm then went on to destroy several homes and mobile homes at nearby Alto Elementary School and Alto High School. It also snapped a metal power pole before crossing Highway 69, where it went on to snap and debark several trees in rural Cherokee County north of Alto before crossing FM 343 and into extreme Northwest Nacogdoches County.

Several trees and power lines down.