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.”
Not long ago, the Texas Longhorns were a once legendary program in decline.
Now Head Coach Steve Sarkisian and surprise QB Quinn Ewers have put the Longhorns back in the national championship conversation. But as Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, aka Spiderman, with great expectations comes great pressure to win the whole damn thing… (or something like that.)
Head coach and former Alabama Crimson Tide offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian has steadily improved his Texas Longhorns since taking over in 2021. He found a projected top 10 NFL Draft pick in Ewers, brought in his heir apparent with the most famous last name in football, No. 1 overall recruit Arch Manning, won the Longhorns’ first Big 12 title since 2009, and took his team to the College Football Playoff for the first time in program history.
Now expectations are higher than ever. Texas is preseason ranked No. 3 with the third best odds to win it all in 2024. What do the Longhorns have to do to turn high hopes into reality?
Shut down opposing QBs
The glaring weakness in an otherwise impressive 2023 campaign from the Longhorns was a young secondary without much depth that finished 113th in the country against the pass. This included a 430 yard, two touchdown torching by Washington Huskies phenom Michael Penix Jr. in a season-ending loss at the Sugar Bowl in the College Football Playoff.
But the Longhorns have taken measures to turn this weakness into a strength. They’ve snagged the No. 1 ranked safety in the transfer portal, Clemson standout Andrew Mukuba, who helped lead the Tigers to a top-5 defense against the pass. They also managed to bring back NFL-calibur cornerback Jahdae Barron, a fifth-year senior with loads of much-needed experience who had entertained leaving for the draft at the end of the 2023 season.
With the continued development of second-year starter Derek Williams Jr., and incoming freshmen talent like four-star recruit and track athlete Xavier Filsaime, improved secondary play will be essential, especially in an all-important matchup against the top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs QB Carson Beck, who threw for nearly 4,000 yards in 2023.
Excellence from Quinn Ewers
High-level quarterback play is a no-brainer for any team, but Quinn Ewers will have to rise above multiple challenges most signal callers never face, much less simultaneously.
For starters, Ewers lost his top four pass catchers from the 2023 season to the NFL Draft: wide receivers Xavier Worthy, Adonai Mitchell, and Jordan Whittington, plus tight end Ja’Tavian Sanders. On top of that, the Longhorns’ moving from the Big 12 to the SEC comes with a significant rise in the defensive capabilities of their opponents.
Only one defense Texas played in 2023 ranked higher than 50th in total defense – and that was Alabama at No. 18, a team Texas managed to upset by only a field goal. In 2024, against a host of SEC foes, Texas will face six such defenses, including their new SEC rival Georgia Bulldogs, who come in at No. 9.
Ewers will have to quickly gel with his new receiving corp, including heralded Alabama transfer Isaiah Boyd, if he hopes to repeat his 2023 success and lead his team through a tough SEC and extended College Football Playoff.
Watch out for Oklahoma
Who would ever think that the Red River Rivalry, an unbroken, heated, 95-year matchup that is one of the most celebrated in all of college football, against all-time nemesis and fellow Big 12 escapee Oklahoma, could be a sneaky trap game?
It might seem especially unlikely given last year’s huge upset at the hands of the Sooners, led by a monster, 398 total-yard performance from uber-talented QB Dillon Gabriel, now of course surprisingly an Oregon Duck. But when Texas and Oklahoma face off on October 12th, the Longhorns will be coming off their first SEC matchup against the always tough Mississippi St. Bulldogs on September 28th, then will have the biggest matchup on their calendar the very next Saturday, a visit from top SEC QB Carson Beck and the unanimous preseason No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs, a game teeming with SEC Championship and playoff bye implications.
The good news is that Texas’ bye comes right before this brutal stretch. The Longhorns will have to somehow keep Georgia off their minds for those two weeks prior and handle business in Dallas before turning their attention to their toughest matchup of the season.
Expectations are high for the breakout Longhorns in 2024, yet so are the challenges they will have to overcome. But on the other side of those obstacles is a realistic shot at a national championship trophy they haven’t hoisted since 2005.
NORTH TEXAS — Highs Sunday hit 93°, the same as Saturday. The heat index also stayed under 100° both days.
Since the sixth Day of June, DFW has only logged 0.10″ of rain. Rain is back in the forecast this week.
Deep tropical moisture is pouring into North Texas over the next 48 hours. That is because our first tropical system of the season is rapidly developing in the Gulf of Mexico.
The forecast shows a developed tropical low in the Gulf by early Wednesday.
There is a chance for significant flooding in Texas due to this system. The heaviest rain will likely fall along the coast and into the Hill Country and south.
The best rain chances for North Texas will start on Wednesday and go to Thursday morning.
Localized flooding is a threat from these storms. Once the rain starts to push southwest of North Texas by late Thursday, the weather returns to hot and dry. Just after summer starts, North Texas is back to the typical summer weather: hot and dry.
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ROUND ROCK, Texas (KXAN) — Two people are dead and multiple others were injured after a shooting at a Juneteenth celebration in Texas.
Police in Round Rock, a city located less than 20 miles north of Austin, said the shooting began just before 11 p.m. at Old Settlers Park after a fight between two groups who were at the Juneteenth event.
“The unfortunate part is that we had innocent victims as a result of this reckless actions of certain subjects,” Police Chief Allen Banks said during a media briefing. “We’re here to celebrate Juneteenth and the unfortunate part is these folks could care less about someone’s life and take someone’s life and on a day we’re here to celebrate community.”
Banks shared that officers and members of the Round Rock Fire Department who were there immediately tried to help the victims of the shooting. Austin-Travis County EMS medics also responded to the incident and said four adults and two kids had potentially serious injuries.
Two people were pronounced dead at the scene. Their ages and identities have not yet been released.
Those injured, who were not part of the fight, were taken to area hospitals.
“My thoughts and my prayers go out to the victims,” said Banks. “My condolences go out to the families of the deceased.”
Watch the briefing from RRPD Chief Allen Banks:
No additional details were immediately available. Banks said police believe the suspects fled the scene but that there is no threat to the public.
Anyone with video or information about the incident is asked to reach out to the Round Rock Police Department at 512-218-5500.
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