A one-two punch of severe storms Wednesday left North Texas largely unscathed but produced multiple tornado touchdowns in Oklahoma.
An initial wave of showers and storms produced areas of heavy rain and hail Wednesday morning west of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, and a broader line of storms moved across DFW during the evening rush hour.
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Rain totals in Tarrant and Dallas counties approached a quarter- to half-inch in many areas, while several North Texas counties east of Dallas received more than one inch of rain.
NBC 5 viewers in Parker and Wise counties reported golf-ball size hail when the storms passed their communities.
A lightning strike caused minor injuries for a young girl in Saginaw. Elena Carrell was in the kitchen of her family's home when lightning struck the chimney.
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"The lightning went through the blender and it got my hand when I was using it," Elena Carrell said.
She was left with minor burns and bruises on her hands. Meanwhile, the home's chimney caught fire.
Firefighters quickly extinguished the flames, and the girl's father is thankful the situation wasn't worse.
"When people aren't home and this happens, the house burns down, so we we're lucky," Chris Carrell said.
At 7 p.m. Oncor reported more than 8,000 power outages in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, including nearly 6,500 customers without power in Tarrant County; 1,400 in Denton County; 400 in Johnson County and 400 in Dallas County.
By 11 p.m. only about 800 outages remained in Tarrant County.
Nearly 9 million people in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas were in an enhanced area of risk Wednesday, putting them in the bull's-eye for some of the strongest storms, the national Storm Prediction Center said earlier Wednesday. The area of highest risk included the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.
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National Weather Service meteorologist Amy Jankowski said a tornado touched down and lifted up numerous times as it swept through the northern Tulsa and Owasso areas.
Emergency Medical Services Authority, an ambulance service provider, tweeted Wednesday night that weather-related calls resulted in seven patients transported in northeastern Oklahoma. It said most calls were for serious injuries. There was one critical patient.
In Louisiana, the National Weather service issued a flash flood watch for northern parts of the state until 7 p.m. Thursday. Forecasters say multiple rounds of strong to severe thunderstorms will produce 2 to 4 inches of rain — and perhaps 6 inches in some parts of the state.
"Heavy rain from waves of storms could renew flooding over north Louisiana," said Cynthia Palmer, a forecaster at the weather service's office in Shreveport, Louisiana.
The ground remains saturated in that part of the state, which saw record flooding earlier this month, Palmer said.
"We will see the heaviest rain in the Monroe area of northeast Louisiana starting late this afternoon and evening and another wave on Thursday," Palmer said Wednesday morning. "This is the area that could see up of 6 inches."
