“They told us that it was coming our way,” Henry, 49, said Monday, recalling the moments before the storm hit. “I looked and it was cloudy. It started lifting us up, and my son grabbed my shoulder and said, ‘Daddy,’ and I said, ‘Hold on.’”
The tornado slammed through the heart of a residential area near the small downtown of Franklin, Texas, about 125 miles south of Dallas, leaving blocks of rubble in its wake. It destroyed 55 homes, a church, four businesses, a duplex and part of the local housing authority building, authorities said. Some people had to be pulled out of damaged dwellings.
Although no deaths were reported in Franklin, the system that swept across the country over the weekend, from Texas to the Northeast, spawned tornadoes and flooding that killed at least nine people, including three children, and left a trail of damaged homes, splintered trees and power outages.
“It has been five or six years since we’ve seen tornadoes of that magnitude at this time of year,” said Scott Overpeck, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in southeast Texas. The service said the storm in Franklin had winds of at least 136 mph.
As salvage crews combed through the destruction under a bright noontime sun on Monday, the savagery inflicted on the Henrys’ home stood out: the center had been demolished, giving the appearance that it was two houses.
“After it was over and everything, we kind of got up and, of course, we walked out into what we thought was the living room,” Henry said. “Instead, we were really standing outside, because there were no walls.”
In all, at least 17 tornadoes blew through Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Ohio over the weekend. The storms also dumped snow on parts of the Midwest and deluged the Northeast with heavy rain before moving out to sea on Monday. Four people died in Texas, two in Louisiana, and one each in Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.