Texas
Texas RV park residents use timely 10-minute warning to shelter from deadly tornado
As her son slept Saturday night in the bedroom of their small RV, Brittany Goss nervously tracked news alerts on the storm that was growing angry outside the thin wood-paneled walls of her home.
The weather looked bad, but it seemed to be shifting north, away from the coveted RV community at the Lake Ray Roberts marina she and her husband and son had just moved to a week earlier. Maybe they had already seen the worst of it, she thought.
Photos: Celina neighborhood mangled by late-night tornado
In a small house up the road from the RV park, marina owners Bill and Sherri Williams’ phone rang. It was a friend in Oklahoma who was tracking the storm and watched as it veered from its original path.
“It’s coming your way,” he told the couple. “You have 10 minutes.”
The Williamses jumped into their truck and drove around the marina blaring their horn. They screamed at anyone they could find to take shelter in the walk-in cooler of the marina’s vacant restaurant. It was the only safe place in a community of boats and campers.
Goss heard the frantic honking over the wind and rain. Something is wrong, she thought.
She shook her 7-year-old son awake, grabbed her wallet and raced to her car. In the blackness of the night and the rage of the storm, she drove as fast as she could away from the RV park. If there was a tornado or where it was, she didn’t know. She just knew she wasn’t going to be caught in an RV during one.
Inside the marina restaurant next to the RV park, the Williamses shut themselves and more than a dozen other people inside the walk-in refrigerator. Within minutes the light bulb inside flickered and went dark. The roof groaned and they listened as parts of it peeled away from the building.
For 15 minutes they huddled in the cooler as the storm ripped apart the restaurant and the world outside of it. They thought about the people who didn’t come out of their RVs in time to make it into the makeshift storm shelter. There were at least five of them unaccounted for.
“Everyone is coming out of this alive,” Bill Williams said to himself.
Once the storm passed, he and the others emerged from the cooler to find a horrific scene awaiting them in the dark. RVs were torn in half and thrown across the park as if they were pieces of cardboard caught up in a gust of wind. A man, alive but injured, laid in the parking lot amongst the debris.
The Williamses and the group they sheltered with rushed to the man’s aid and started pushing their way past mangled pieces of metal and vinyl to find other survivors.
“We listened for yells and moans,” Bill Williams said.
They found seven people who had been trapped in their RVs or thrown from their homes during the storm, he said. They were all found alive and somehow made it out with non-life threatening injuries. Only one remains in the hospital, Bill Williams said.
Goss managed to escape to her mother’s home in nearby Aubrey and started piecing together the picture of the reality she and her son narrowly escaped. Every single one of the 24 RVs at the park was destroyed, neighbors told her. Every inch of the community they once called home was unlivable, ripped apart by a storm that cut a path across Cooke and Denton counties in North Texas.
When she arrived at the marina the next morning, Goss found blue skies and an unimaginable scene. Shoes, books, deodorant sticks, spatulas, mattresses, half-eaten waffles, cans of sardines and sinks were strewn across the parking lot. Part of a couch stuck out from a gaping hole in the restaurant’s roof. Her RV, which had been thrown across the street from where it was parked, was unrecognizable.
In the 95-degree heat with air that smelled of gasoline and punctured septic tanks, she and her neighbors picked through the pulverized remnants of their homes to salvage what they could. She managed to save most of their clothes and a few family photos. The rest was lost to the storm.
“We were going to go fishing and hang out by the marina today, but we’re doing this instead,” she said. “I’m just grateful we’re alive.”
Texas A&M has been hard at work attempting to rebuild the trenches on both sides of the ball thus far through the transfer portal window.
That journey has gone smoothly as well, with the Aggies landing offensive tackles Tyree Adams (LSU) and Wilkin Formby (Alabama) as well as interior linemen Coen Echols (LSU) and Trovon Baugh (South Carolina) on one side of the ball, and edge rushers Ryan Henderson (San Diego State) and Anto Saka (Northwestern) and defensive tackle Brandon Davis-Swain (Colorado) on the other.
Now, they have added another name to that mix on the defensive side of the ball, and have done so from another power conference talent.
According to multiple reports, the Aggies have gained a commitment from Illinois defensive tackle Angelo McCullom. He made his decision final following a recent visit to Aggieland.
Who is Angelo McCullom?
The sophomore defensive lineman has spent his first two seasons with Illinois and will have two years of college eligibility remaining.
The six-foot-two, 300-pound defensive lineman saw the field in all 12 games for Illinois this season and earned two starts. In his appearances, McCullom recorded 19 tackles, three tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks, two quarterback hurries, and two pass breakups this season.
The sophomore was also on the field plenty throughout 2025 as he played 295 snaps, the most among Illinois interior defensive linemen, where he earned a 66.9 grade by Pro Football Focus.
McCullom saw the field quickly as a true freshman in the 2024 season, where he played in seven games and tallied two tackles, .5 tackles for loss, and .5 sacks.
The product out of Pickerington North High School in Lewis Center, OH, was a three-star prospect in the 2024 recruiting class. McCullom ranked as the No. 139 defensive lineman in the class and the No. 46 prospect in Ohio, per 247Sports, and committed to Illinois over the likes of Indiana and Pittsburgh.
McCullom now joins Davis-Swain on the interior, who committed to Texas A&M earlier this week on Jan. 5. The six-foot-four, 290-pound defensive lineman recorded 15 tackles, 1.5 sacks, a forced fumble, and one pass defended for the Buffaloes this season.
And his addition now brings in an experienced player in a physical conference like the Big Ten, with the size and frame that can hold up and be productive in the SEC.
The two additions doesn’t mean the Aggies are done on the interior defensively.
Rather, far from it. And far from being done in the portal overall.
Alabama basketball had every chance to beat Texas on Saturday. Time and time again, UA pulled it close, only to blow the opportunity to win.
Instead, the Crimson Tide fell 92-88, dropping to 1-2 to begin SEC play, and taking its second straight defeat. Afterward, Nate Oats went off on his team.
“We got guys that don’t care enough to lock in and follow a game plan,” Oats said during his postgame press conference. “Losing doesn’t bother them enough yet. I don’t know how many losses it’s going to take ‘till it bothers them, but it’s bothering me. It bothers the coaching staff, and as soon as it starts bothering the players enough, I’m sure they’ll change.”
On the defensive end, Alabama couldn’t get enough stops when it needed to. Texas’ Jordan Pope led all scorers with 28 points, tying his career high.
Dailyn Swain and Tramon Mark had 18 each for the Longhorns. UT averaged 1.314 points per possession.
Alabama’s defensive efficiency dropped to 79th in the nation following the loss according to KenPom.
“All of it starts with effort,” Oats said of the defensive issues. “Want to. Competitive edge. Guys who just don’t want to lose, they’re gonna give you everything they got. Guys are apparently too comfortable with losing right now because they’re not giving us everything they got on that end of the floor. SO I think it starts with having guys that just refuse to lose, to start with.
“From there it goes to guys in the moment having some personal pride on stopping their man. Too many blow-bys.Too many isolation plays were just beat one-on-one. Guys not locked in on the help side.”
Another issue for Alabama late in the game was poor free-throw shooting. UA hit 11-of-12 attempts in the first half, but went just 8-for-15 from the line in the second, which became crucial as the referees made their presence known late.
Oats was asked what went wrong from the charity stripe.
“When you’re worried about the wrong stuff,” Oats said. “When you’re locked in, you’re locked in. When you’re locked into defense, all you care about is winning the game. And when you’re locked in on the defensive end, then you go to the line and you’re locked in and you’re just focused on winning the game, you’re gonna step up and you’re gonna make your free throws.
“And when you’re worried about a lot of stuff that’s a distraction and you’re worried about stats and some other stuff and you’re not locked in, that’s when you get to the line and you miss. Especially when you’re a good shooter. Guys that should be making free throws at a high level.”
Alabama travels to Mississippi State on Tuesday to try and get back on track, before a Saturday trip to Oklahoma. Oats did offer some hope that his team would improve, drawn from the team that just beaten the Crimson Tide.
Texas coach Sean Miller had called out his team after its previous loss to Tennessee.
“It bothered Texas,” Oats said. “Texas lost two in a row and started 0-2 (in the SEC). That team looked a lot different than the team that played at Tennessee. So it obviously bothered them enough to change. So hopefully at some point it bothers our guys enough that they’ll invest on the defensive end of the floor.”
Tristan Jernigan, a Texas A&M sophomore linebacker who was a four-star prospect in high school, has signed with Cal out of the transfer portal.
Jernigan comes to Berkeley with three years of eligibility after seeing action in just two games this season. He played against Notre Dame without any stats and had three tackles, including one tackle for loss, against Samford.
He is the second members of the Aggies’ squad to join the Bears, following defensive end Solomon Williams, who signed last Sunday.
The 6-foot-1, 230-pounder from Tupelo, Miss., also drew interest from Tennessee, Memphis, Louisville, Ole Miss, Arizona State, Baylor and San Diego State.
Jernigan played eight games as a true freshman in 2024, primarily on special teams. He had 11 tackles, including five against McNeese State, and was named the team’s defensive scout team player of the year.
At Tupelo High School, Jernigan had 177 tackles with 11.5 sacks his final two seasons. Those teams compiled a two-year record of 22-4 with a Class 6A state semifinal appearance as a junior in 2022.
He was rated by 247 Sports as the No. 28 linebacker prospect in the class and the No. 9 recruit in the state of Mississippi.
He is not related to former Cal linebacker Myles Jernigan, who was from Grand Prairie, Texas, and spent five years in Berkeley through the 2023 season.
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