HUMBLE, Texas — The National Weather Service confirmed Sunday that multiple tornadoes touched down in the Houston area late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, according to findings from survey teams.
EF-1 damage was found near Humble and EF-0 damage near Montgomery. The survey teams also found an EF-1 tornado hit the Kingwood area.
Craig Tatom, family and friends were in front of his in-law's house on Sunday when the tornado hit.
“You started hearing everything hitting the roof ... pelting. It sounded like, man, that’s not hail ... then just crashing everywhere,” Tatom said.
Tatom and his nephew are now helping clean up the aftermath.
“It’s been a great effort. A good, collaborative community effort. Similar efforts just like we had in Harvey,” Joshua Bloom said.
The community is no stranger to the devastation of severe weather.
“It’s unbelievable with the hurricanes we’ve seen in the last 20 years or whatever, they don’t even compare hardly to what we saw last night,” Kingwood resident Mike Willcox said.
Scientists use the Fujita scale to measure tornado damage intensity. An EF-0 means winds were between 40 and 72 mph, and an EF-1 tornado has winds between 73 and 112 mph.
Multiple buildings were destroyed and damage was widespread in the Humble area.
Humble Police Chief Ken Theis said a tornado hit downtown Humble at about 1:30 a.m. and moved northward causing significant damage to multiple businesses and residents.
In Montgomery, the storms ripped roofs off of businesses and homes, some of them under construction just northeast of downtown.
The National Weather Service also said video showed what was believed to be an EF-0 tornado that had touched down near Bush Intercontinental Airport on Saturday.
An eyewitness also reported what may have been an EF-0 tornado struck near Dayton in Liberty County, but weather service staff needed to gather more specifics before making a final determination.
In addition to those storms, National Weather Service officials said a tornado may have touched down in the Plum Grove area, but staff was still looking into those reports.
The tornadoes were spawned from storms that formed as a front moved northward across the Houston area Saturday, prompting multiple severe thunderstorms, tornados, and flash flood warnings across the region.
Power outages from the storms continued into Sunday afternoon for thousands of customers.