Dallas-Ft Worth Area Raked by Massive Tornado Outbreak

Funnel cloud touching down near a residential area south of Dallas, TX on April 3rd. AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News, Parrish Velasco

The Dallas Ft Worth Metroplex was struck by a series of tornadoes that moved through heavily populated suburbs on Tuesday, blocking streets and highways with fallen trees and light poles while tossing around big rigs as though they were plastic bags in a stiff breeze. Funnel clouds were confirmed to have touched down as close as five miles from downtown Dallas.

BURLESON, Texas – Tornadoes raked the Dallas area Tuesday, crumbling a wing of a nursing home, peeling roofs from dozens of homes and spiraling big-rig trailers into the air like footballs. More than a dozen injuries were reported.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport canceled hundreds of flights and diverted others heading its way. Among the most stunning video was an industrial section of Dallas, where rows of empty tractor-trailers crumpled like soda cans littered a parking lot.

"The officers were watching the tornadoes form and drop," Kennedale police Chief Tommy Williams said. "It was pretty active for a while."

The confirmed tornadoes touched down near Royce City and Silver Springs, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop

The tornado also tore through a regional operations center for Wisconsin-based trucking company Schneider National, tossing trailers and big rigs around like they were Matchbox toys.



In addition to shearing the roofs off of area homes and launching parked cars into apartment buildings, one of the tornadoes reportedly collapsed one wing of an Arlington, TX nursing home while other twisters in the area had near-misses with a Flying J Trucks Stop, a schoolhouse and Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.


Ranger's minor league catcher Zach Zaneski and 3rd baseman Mike Olt were inside the ballpark for the near-miss. Zaneski used his cell phone camera to film the winds ripping the tarp off the field before he and other Ranger personnel retreated further into the ballpark. Although Zaneski didn't have a twitter account, Rangers catcher Mike Napoli circulated the amateur video from his twitter account.

American Airlines cancelled all flights out of nearby DFW airport- one of the airline's primary hubs. At nearby Love Field in Dallas, Southwest Airlines suspended all service. Even after the storms had passed, airlines in the region halted all flights so that damage to aircraft and other equipment from falling hail could be assessed.

Remarkably, there have not been any reports of fatalities from the Tuesday afternoon onslaught of twisters, although at least a dozen people have been reported injured.