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Storm Spawns Two Hill Country Tornadoes

Blanco County Emergency Management
destruction from Sunday morning's tornado

The strong storms late Saturday night that were expected to pound San Antonio... didn't. But according to National Weather Service Meteorologist Keith White, other locales suffered major damages.

"There was one very strong super cell thunderstorm  out in Del Rio that dropped baseball softball size hail. We had several reports of 4-inch hail between Del Rio and Brackettville," he said.

Credit Blanco County Emergency Management
path one of the two tornadoes took

The storms continued on a roughly southwest-to-northeast track, until the early hours of Sunday morning, creating a pair of tornadoes in the Hill Country.

"The first was out to the northwest of Fredericksburg in the area of Willow City," he said.

In a subsequent report the NWS said that tornado was an EF1, with high winds of about 100 miles per Hour. It touched ground at about 4:40 a.m. Sunday, and cut about a 12-mile long, 150-yard swath of damage for the next 16 minutes, when the tornado lifted.

White said a second tornado touched down near Round Mountain in northern Blanco County.

Credit Blanco County Emergency Management
tornado's path of destruction

"That tornado did do significant damage to a couple of RV parks along Highway 281," he said. "The estimates from Blanco County Emergency Management are of about a $1 million in damage from that second tornado."

The National weather service also labeled this one an EF1, with high winds at about 90 miles per hour. Its 200 yard wide path of destruction went on for 11 minutes and just less than 6 miles in length, destroying 11 homes in its path.

In its wake, the storms left much cooler weather and mostly clear skies.

Jack Morgan can be reached at Jack@TPR.org and on Twitter at @JackMorganii.

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Jack Morgan can be reached at jack@tpr.org and on Twitter at @JackMorganii