- An American Airlines Boeing 737 was blown across the tarmac at Dallas Airport
- Plane was moved several feet from its position but no passengers were on board
- Storms were part of a series of destructive weather events across the state
An American Airlines Boeing 737-800 was seen being blown across the tarmac at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on Tuesday morning.
The plane, weighing 90,000 lbs had been parked at gate C21 as torrential rain and strong winds of up to 80mph swirled across the taxiway.
The gusts were so strong the plane was blown several feet from its parking position.
Airport surveillance footage sees the aircraft spinning away from the passenger airbridge as if it were a toy.
No passengers were onboard although the cabin door was open at the time.
Maintenance crews are ‘currently conducting thorough inspections and will make any needed repairs,’ an airline spokesperson said.
The airport canceled 202 flights and delayed 500 flights during the extreme weather.
The strong storms with damaging winds and baseball-sized hail pummeled Texas on leaving one person dead and about 600,000 businesses and homes without power.
Destructive storms over the Memorial Day weekend caused the deaths of at least 24 people in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia.
Widespread outages were reported across a wide swath of storm-weary Texas, where an oppressive, early-season heat wave added to the misery.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins declared a disaster and noted that some nursing homes were using generators. ‘This ultimately will be a multiday power outage situation,’ Jenkins said Tuesday.
Around Houston, cars crawled through flooded highways and more than 300,000 customers were without power in the area, which includes parts still recovering from hurricane-force winds earlier this month.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that a 16-year-old boy died when a home under construction began to shift and then collapsed during a thunderstorm in the Houston suburb of Magnolia.
The teen was confirmed to be an employee of the construction company and was authorized to be on the site, the statement said.
An East Houston school district issued a shelter-in-place order and directed buses with students back to their campuses in the afternoon until the weather subsided.
Over the weekend, seven people were killed in Cooke County, Texas from a tornado that tore through a mobile home park Saturday, officials said, and an additional seven deaths were reported across Arkansas.
Two people died in Mayes County, Oklahoma, east of Tulsa, authorities said. The injured included guests at an outdoor wedding. A Missouri man died Sunday after a tree limb fell onto his tent as he was camping.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said five people had died in his state during storms that struck close to where a devastating swarm of twisters killed 81 people in December 2021.
One family last their home for a second time on the same lot where a twister leveled their house less than three years ago.
Roughly 700,000 homes and businesses lacked electricity as of Tuesday night in Texas, Kentucky and Missouri.
It has been a grim month of tornadoes and severe weather in the nation’s midsection.
Tornadoes in Iowa last week left at least five people dead and dozens injured.
Storms killed eight people in Houston this month.
April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country.
The storms come as climate change contributes in general to the severity of storms around the world.
Late May is the peak of tornado season, but the recent storms have been exceptionally violent, producing very strong tornadoes, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University.
‘Over the weekend, we’ve had a lot of hot and humid air, a lot of gasoline, a lot of fuel for these storms. And we’ve had a really strong jet stream as well. That jet stream has been aiding in providing the wind shear necessary for these types of tornadoes,’ Gensini said.
Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, said a persistent pattern of warm, moist air is to blame for the string of tornadoes over the past two months.
That air is at the northern edge of a heat dome bringing temperatures typically seen at the height of summer to late May.
The heat index – a combination of air temperature and humidity to indicate how the heat feels to the human body – reached triple digits in parts of south Texas and is expected to stay there for several days.
