Severe storms hit area hard

A severe storm system that issued 17 preliminary tornado reports on Saturday produced straight line winds that wreaked havoc across the region, primarily in Oklahoma and Texas. Locally, the potential for rotation around Bardwell, Garrett, Rice or Alma did not materialize, though warnings were made. Bardwell was without power for over 6 hours. Power then went down again on Monday evening with Oncor reporting 388 customers in Bardwell effected by the outage and another 135 in Ennis. Weatherman Pete Delkus, of WFAA-TV in Dallas, said that “straight line winds can cause as much damage as a weak tornado.”