More than six feet of snow falling in parts of Southern California. Hurricane force winds whipping up blinding dust storms in Texas and powerful tornadoes ripping through Oklahoma. And Kansas. Take a look at this. This is a scene out of Norman, Oklahoma, just south of Oklahoma City where a tornado touched down. Police and firefighters are searching through the wreckage this morning. They say at least 12 people are injured. No reported deaths so far. Listen to this woman who was inside her home with her family when the tornado struck Before I can even blink, I could hear the wind coming. All of a sudden, all the back windows where the kids bedrooms are. I can hear them just crashing, busting out. And I got up and then the wind just threw me back and I’m screaming. It was like a blizzard inside the house with all the debris flying. And I was screaming for my kids, you know, because they were in their bedrooms. I didn’t know they were hurt or anything. Terrified mother. Ed Lavandera joins us this morning on the ground in Norman, Oklahoma. Ed, it looks terrible behind you. What happened Well, this storm system ripped across this state in breathtaking speed, but it has left haunting images like these massive pieces of plywood left in trees A massive storm system barreled through the Central Plains Sunday night to traditionally the southern plains and Tornado Alley, if you will. It doesn’t really start to come alive with these tornadoes and these severe weather outbreaks until maybe March, especially April and May. That’s the peak tornado, severe season here in the southern plans. But, you know, so this is quite an early wakeup call. Multiple tornadoes touched down in the region as well. In Norman, Oklahoma, a tornado caused downed power lines and road closures. This is terrible to have this tornado going through Norman like this. It’s just past 48th and Lindsay moving up to the northeast. And we’re going to try to get back on I-40 and get out ahead of it again. We’re going as fast as we can. That is not good right there on the West Side at Thunderbird, guys. Oh, it’s getting even stronger. The storm ripped roofs off homes and damaged cars. A lot of real strong wind. I was standing out in the garage. My wife went to the neighbor’s to get in a shelter. Oh, a wooden debris started flying and hitting things. So I jumped in the back seat of a car in the garage. Real quick, two tornadoes were reported in Kansas on Sunday, leaving homes in the area destroyed. Winds in the triple digits were felt the highest in Memphis, Texas, where winds hit a staggering 114 miles per hour, the equivalent of a Category three hurricane in Lubbock, Texas. A dust storm rolled through, leaving visibility in the area to less than a mile. And in Albuquerque, New Mexico, winds topped over 70 miles per hour, leaving overturned trees and businesses damaged. I’m in shock, you know, but because we love our restaurant, we we love our work, this amount of damage with this wind. I haven’t seen anything like this for the 20 plus years I’ve been living here. This storm system started in California, where parts of Southern California saw a rare storm that dumped massive amounts of snow in the area. Huge snow totals were seen throughout the region, including Mountain High, which recorded 93 inches of snow through Sunday morning. Rain was dumped on other parts of California, causing flooding and leaving cars stranded California firefighters were seen rescuing this driver by helicopter as floodwaters continue to rise. The storm left the ground so eroded that this RV fell into the Valencia River. I’m just kind of afraid or not to evacuate if it gets any worse. And probably if there is a couple of silver linings to all of this. The worst kind of storm damage like you’re seeing behind me has been very isolated into the areas where some of these tornadoes fell down rather quickly. So that is good news in terms of just it’s not widespread damage across the state, but also with this wind event and the intense winds that we’ve seen over the last 24 hours here in the state, there was a great concern of widespread power outages. We’re about 30,000 customers in the state of Oklahoma without power this morning. And we’ve noticed that that number has been dropping rather quickly in these overnight hours. So hopefully that’s something that gets under control rather quickly for residents here in Oklahoma as well. I really hope so. Ed Lavendera, thank you to you and your team for being there. Let’s get to our meteorologist now. Chad Myers said this is some very strange weather. A friend in L.A. out of her home for three days. Her power was out, downed trees in her neighborhood. This is in Los Angeles, right? Especially in the L.A. mountains, too, with all of that snow, some spots over 60 inches of snow. It’s the same energy, the same low pressure that moved through Oklahoma yesterday with a very serious situation here. And as Ed alluded to, over 100 mile per hour wind gusts. These storms, though, we’re moving at 80 miles per hour. Those are storms you can’t chase you can’t get out of the way. When you hear your warning for storms like this, you must get in the basement or someplace safe. Here’s 10:00 last night. Here’s Oklahoma City and Norman especially now look where this storm is now. You could hardly drive that quickly to where it is now. To Little Rock, Arkansas. The severe weather will be to the east. Winds are still gusting about 55 miles per hour. The severe weather centered over Indianapolis and also over Columbus, Ohio. But look at this for 11:00 tonight. It starts to snow in New York City and then it even begins to snow in Boston. I haven’t really said Boston and snow in the same sentence all year. So this could be a one to five inch snowfall across parts of the Catskills, probably closer to two to four for the city and then two to four for Boston itself. We’ll still watch this, but a slick morning commute coming up tomorrow morning for sure. Don, when was the last time you said New York City and snow as well in New York? I know.
