Tornadoes sweep through Dallas area leaving destruction in their wake

The death toll from storms that have rampaged through the South rose to at least 22 people Saturday as flooding continued in Mississippi and a half-dozen tornadoes were reported in the Dallas area.

The latest deaths occurred in the Dallas suburbs, where the police told The Dallas Morning News that four people had died from a weather-related incident, possibly a traffic accident during the storm, and that about 50,000 people in the area had lost power.

The new storms were the latest in the string of unusual weather events in the past week. They included a snowstorm on the Mexico-Texas border that affected playing conditions at the Sun Bowl in El Paso and a blizzard in the Texas Panhandle that officials warned could be of historic proportions.

In the early evening, sirens blared in downtown Dallas, and funnels were reported in at least four suburbs. Travelers at Dallas Love Field airport were warned to stay away from the windows, and videos on Twitter showed theatergoers being evacuated from an AMC movie complex at NorthPark Center, a prominent mall.

Rains in the Deep South continued to cause flash floods that have killed 10 people in Mississippi and led to the evacuation of 336 inmates from the Red Eagle Community Work Center in Montgomery, Alabama, on Saturday afternoon. The National Weather Service’s alert map showed a mosaic of warnings across much of the country Saturday evening.

In the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and parts of northern New Mexico, the National Weather Service warned of a “crippling blizzard” that could batter the region from Saturday evening until noon Monday. The storm was expected to drop as much as 18 inches of snow, and 65 mph winds could create drifts of 5 to 10 feet, the Weather Service said.

Mark Conder, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that the region had not seen such a storm since 1983, when 16.9 inches of snow fell.

“We could be looking at possibly near that record,” Conder told the paper.

The snow had already begun in El Paso, where Washington State University beat the University of Miami, 20-14, in the Sun Bowl.

This story was originally published December 26, 2015 at 11:51 AM with the headline "Tornadoes sweep through Dallas area leaving destruction in their wake."