Powerful storms struck Dallas County around 6 a.m. Tuesday, triggering tornado warnings for the Richardson and Garland areas and bringing strong winds across North Texas.
DALLAS — Dallas County officials issued a disaster declaration after severe storms ripped through the region, leaving tens of thousands of residents without power Tuesday morning.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins posted on X on Tuesday that he expected “many Oncor customers to be without power for several days.” The judge signed a disaster declaration Tuesday morning, he announced at an 11:30 a.m. press conference.
Jenkins was joined at the press conference by Dallas County Emergency Management Director Scott Forster and representatives from Oncor.
Jenkins said Oncor crews were on the ground in North Texas working to restore power to critical infrastructure facilities. Jenkins said Carrollton Regional Hospital may have lost power Tuesday morning, but all other hospitals in the county had power.
Jenkins said facilities like nursing homes should be powered through backup generators.
Still, Jenkins said county residents should expect to be without power for several hours, and possibly days.
“Just because you’re out now doesn’t mean it’s going to last for days,” Jenkins said. “It’s certainly possible that you could be out for days.”
A powerful storm struck Dallas County around 6 a.m. Tuesday, triggering tornado warnings for the Richardson and Garland areas and strong winds across North Texas. The storm caused widespread damage, including downed power lines and uprooted trees, and likely contributed to the power outages that occurred across Dallas County.
More than 600,000 customers across North Texas lost power, according to an outage map from Oncor.
The outage map shows the areas with the most outages in Dallas County: As of 9:15 a.m., 357,727 customers were without power.
Check out the outage map here.
More North Texas weather forecast information:
