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 will be without its leading scorer for this weekend’s top-10 matchup against Alabama. The Aggies listed senior point guard Wade Taylor IV as out in its SEC-mandated availability report on Friday night.
Meanwhile, Alabama will be without backup guard Houston Mallette, who was listed as out for the matchup against Texas A&M. Earlier on Friday, Alabama head coach Nate Oats said Mallette is having his knees evaluated as the team decides whether or not to sit him for the rest of the season and apply for a medical redshirt.
Taylor leads Texas A&M in both scoring (15.7 points per game) and assists (4.8 per game. The 6-foot, 180-pound senior has scored in double digits in all of his 13 games this season. During Texas A&M’s 100-75 loss at Alabama last year, the Tide held Taylor to 10 points and five rebounds on 4 of 15 shooting, including 2 of 5 from beyond the arc.
According to a report from KWKT FOX 44, Taylor experienced knee tightness during Texas A&M’s 80-60 win over Texas on Jan. 4. The guard left for the locker room during the second half against the Longhorns but was able to return to action, finishing with 13 points on 25 minutes. Taylor did not play during the Aggies’ 80-78 win over Oklahoma on Wednesday. He was replaced by senior Manny Obaseki in the starting lineup.
With Taylor out, Texas A&M leaned on senior guard Zhuric Phelps, who scored a career-high 34 points against Oklahoma, making 11 of 25 shots from the floor, including 6 of 10 from beyond the arc.
Alabama (13-2, 2-0 in the SEC) is set to tip off against Texas A&M (13-2, 2-0) on Saturday at 7 p.m. CT inside Reed Arena in College Station, Texas. The game will be televised on ESPN.
On Friday night, two of college football’s iconic programs will meet with a spot in the College Football Playoff National Championship game on the line.
The Ohio State Buckeyes and Texas Longhorns have their fingerprints all over the sport’s history yet somehow have squared off only three times.
A Fiesta Bowl meeting after the 2008 season. A home-and-home series in 2005 and 2006. That’s all the history the Buckeyes and Longhorns share on the gridiron — until they take the field in the CFP Semifinal at the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic on Friday.
Here’s how each of those three matchups played out.
Jan. 5, 2009: Texas 24, Ohio State 21
Although the 2009 Fiesta Bowl experienced a low-scoring first 30 minutes (the Buckeyes led 6-3 at halftime), the fourth quarter offered an ending to remember.
First, Ohio State roared back into the lead with 17 unanswered points after entering the final period trailing 17-6. With just two minutes to respond, Texas put together an impressive 11-play drive that culminated in quarterback Colt McCoy finding wide receiver Quan Cosby for the winning touchdown with 16 seconds remaining.
The McCoy and Cosby connection dominated all game, with the pair linking up 14 times for 171 yards and a pair of touchdowns.
Sept. 9, 2006: Ohio State 24, Texas 7
McCoy’s first encounter with Ohio State wasn’t as pleasant as the Fiesta Bowl.
In a battle of the then-No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the land, it was the top-ranked Buckeyes who made an early-season statement against the defending national champion Longhorns on the road in Austin. Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith, who would go on to win the Heisman Trophy that season, threw for 269 yards and two touchdowns as the Buckeyes scored in all four quarters of the win.
Sept. 10, 2005: Texas 25, Ohio State 22
The first meeting between the Longhorns and Buckeyes came with nearly the same high billing as the 2006 contest, with the two squads squaring off as the No. 2 and No. 4 teams in the country, respectively.
As in 2006, it was the higher-ranked visiting side that came out on top, although the game itself proved to be much closer. Texas jumped out to an early 10-0 lead, but Ohio State battled back and eventually entered halftime, and then the fourth quarter, ahead.
Said final quarter, however, belonged to the Longhorns. Quarterback Vince Young’s 24-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Limas Sweed proved to be the winner, with Texas adding some insurance in the game’s final moments with a safety-inducing sack of Troy Smith in the end zone.
The top-five win was the Longhorns’ first major statement in a campaign that would end with a national championship.
NORTH TEXAS – This week’s snow event will end with a “few flurries” during Friday’s morning commute, according to CBS News Texas meteorologist Jeff Ray.
“But roads will have frozen over,” Ray said.
Expect hazardous road conditions in the morning, as it will be “the worst” the roads have been since the event started on Thursday morning, Ray said.
Late in the morning, temperatures will rise above freezing, which will “help drivers get around the Metroplex,” Ray said.
A cold front is expected Friday, he said.
“We are going to have wind chills in the 20s all day,” Ray said. “By nightfall on Friday, temperatures will drop quickly and water will re-freeze on the roads across the evening. This ice will remain until mid-morning on Saturday before the sun and warmer temperatures in the mid-40s clear the roadways.”
CBS News Texas will continue to provide updates as information becomes available.
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