Storm threat continues east across the Gulf Coast after destruction in Houston

The same system that led to devastating straight-line winds in East Texas is moving from Louisiana into Florida on the night of May 17.

Transcript

00:00 Well, our top story is the multi-day severe weather threat that's continuing through the

00:04 South. The National Weather Service says downtown Houston saw straight-line wind damage last

00:09 night with peak winds of 100 miles per hour. Windows were blown out on high rises, trees

00:14 were toppled and power lines were torn down, with power still remaining lost for many customers.

00:21 And AccuWeather's preliminary estimate of total damage and economic loss in Houston,

00:25 five to seven billion dollars from one round of storms last night. Pretty nasty stuff out

00:31 there and again, huge dollar figure tied to that and we're going to learn the full magnitude

00:35 of all the impacts as time progresses. But farther east now Melissa, we're tracking some

00:39 severe weather. There is a tornado warning in the Florida Panhandle still. So as we zoom

00:44 in on this, we can see south of Dothan, Alabama, still some nasty weather and we're going to

00:49 look at the radar data out of Eglin Air Force Base, giving us a pretty good set of eyes

00:52 on this from just about a county and a half off to the southwest. And here you can see

00:57 that the area of rotation, there's not a whole lot of movement away from the radar site but

01:02 there is very strong movement inbound and as we look at this you can see that screaming

01:06 inbound wind and it's just a mere suggestion of some outbound wind. So as we look at the

01:10 velocity couplet here, you can see that we have one couplet there, or one pixel with

01:15 a, it looks like the max wind speed here on the way in is about 77 miles per hour on

01:21 the way out, just a marginal 12 mile per hour outbound wind. So the contrast there is about

01:26 an 89 mile per hour difference and that's enough sometimes to produce severe weather

01:30 and a tornado touchdown. So the risk here is greatest just near and south of Jacobs

01:34 into areas around Cottondale into Jackson County of Florida. And if you're in northeastern

01:39 Washington County, take shelter, play it safe, there is a tornado warning for you for 12

01:43 more minutes. We're going to be tracking that cell through that area there. Embedded within

01:47 a larger zone here with Washington County, Holmes County, Jackson County, southern Houston,

01:52 Geneva and other parts of far southern Alabama, then Walton County under a sizable severe

01:57 thunderstorm warning. Elsewhere to the east, Colquitt County, Georgia and into areas like

02:02 Tift County and Grady County under severe thunderstorm warnings as well. So that's the

02:07 worst of it right now. We've been tracking some areas of occasional rotation up into

02:11 an area west of Martinsville, Virginia and also some strong showers and even a rubble

02:16 of thunder near and west of Charlotte, North Carolina. Let's take a look back, though.

02:19 24 hours ago, what a mess this was is this cluster of storms tore into the area around

02:25 Houston with a fierce round of wind and rain. That bright green there was a signature of

02:31 more than 100 mile per hour winds just a little bit elevated above the ground moving into

02:35 the Houston metro. And ultimately, we are still dealing with 550,000 addresses without

02:39 power in Houston and in Harris County. So over a million people and the wind just a

02:45 tremendous stripe of wind damage right through Houston. And then we had more problems into

02:49 the area around New Iberia later into the night. So tonight we have still a threat for

02:54 tornado threat tornadoes as we showed you on radar there into an area south of Dothan,

02:59 Alabama. And the tornado watch also extends into southwest Georgia until 11 p.m. Eastern

03:04 or 10 Central Time. So some risk into the New Orleans area. The greater risk, though,

03:09 takes us into Tallahassee moving forward, given the radar trends. But look out for some

03:12 new development later tonight. That's when things escalate again into the New Orleans area.