Two tornadoes touched down south of Dallas catapulting 18-wheelers across the area. Aerials from KXAS.
By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com
As dark storm clouds ripped across north Texas on Tuesday afternoon, their destination unclear as they whipped up semi-trucks and uprooted trees, sirens sounded, warning residents that tornadoes approached.
But sirens trigger panic more than they inform, so Texans and their family members turned to Twitter and Facebook to express a sentiment best summed up by Khloe Kardashian Odom, the reality TV personality, when she tweeted, “OMG another tornado!!!! What???”
Others shared 140-character stories, informing strangers in the comments sections of news sites that their loved ones were safe, or that they had no idea what had happened to them.
Widespread damage is seen from the air and ground in the immediate aftermath of a tornado which tore through neighborhoods and commercial areas. Msnbc's Tamron Hall reports.
Joanne Surrency, of Las Vegas, Nev., wrote on Facebook that her brother-in-law works at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. “They all went to bunkers under airport haven’t heard back yet pls pray for everyone in Dallas,” she wrote.
Monica Hunter of Grand Prairie, Texas, said that her parents watched the tornado, an impressive funnel of cloud that consumed the sky. They took shelter in a closet, she reported, staying there as the warning sirens wailed.
“I pray that everyone will be OK,” she wrote.
Minutes later, she logged back on to Facebook. Her parents were fine, she said, and her parents could not spot damage from their home near Bear Creek.
Tornadoes pound suburban Dallas
Glenn Parker wrote on Facebook that he was at Tarrant County College in Arlington, Texas. There, students were pushed into shelter. The students immediately jumped onto their cell phones, he said. He said one student became so claustrophobic that the school staff allowed him to leave the room.
As Arlington School District sent its children into storm shelters, the city of Arlington tweeted an alarming bit of news for people in airtight spaces: There had been reports of ruptured gas lines. The city asked residents to call 911 if they smelled gas.
A helicopter over South Dallas, Texas, catches a tornado tearing through neighborhoods. Msnbc's Tamron Hall reports.
For those who hadn't yet caught a glimpse of the mayhem, who hadn't even seen golf ball-sized hail, the interest was in figuring out where the tornado had been, where it was now and where it was headed.
An NBC Storify news item summed up the news as it happened, providing a hub for the most terrifying videos of the tornado picking up and hurling semi-trucks through the air as though they were toys.
Some of the best updates came from the storm chasers – those thrill seekers who line up, bumper to bumper, following the trucks equipped with weather-monitoring devices.
Peter Delkus, a forecaster with WFAA.com in the Dallas region, tweeted, “Folks near Forney – take cover! Circulation is increasing and we’ve had reports from storm chasers of a possible funnel cloud.”
In response to the storm-chaser tweets, Ben Cantin-Kranz, or @ben_ck, a marketing manager, wrote, “Anyone remember that movie "Twister"? How could it have been better? If storm chasers had twitter! (obvs).”
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