Tornadoes touch down in Texas and Louisiana as storm that dumped heavy snow in California moves through

Tornadoes touched down in Texas and Louisiana as a powerful storm system that dumped heavy snow in California pushed through the Southern Plains and into the Deep South on Thursday, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people at one point and forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights into and out of the Dallas area.

Wind gusts of over 70 mph were reported in Texas as tornado watches were issued into Thursday night in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. National Weather Service teams planned to head out Friday to survey areas for likely tornado damage in the storm's path, which stretched from southeast Oklahoma into Texas and neighboring Arkansas and Louisiana.

"If your phone's alerted and you hear sirens, that is for wind speeds as strong as a weak tornado," the weather service tweeted. "So treat it like one! Get inside, away from windows!"

The Dallas suburb of Richardson asked residents to stop using water after the storm knocked out power to pumping stations.

North of Dallas, winds brought down trees, ripped the roof off a grocery store and overturned four 18-wheelers along U.S. Highway 75. Only minor injuries were reported, police said.

In the Dallas suburb of Little Elm, powerful winds brought the front side of a shopping center crashing down on several vehicles, CBS Texas reported, adding that no one was in any of the vehicles at the time.

In Brock Texas, outside Forth Worth, a resident captured an apparent piece of sheet metal flying toward his house:

And this was damage in North Richland Hills, CBS Texas said:

In Louisiana, a tornado touched down near Louisiana State University in Shreveport.

Elsewhere in the city, a possible tornado damaged a laundromat and three other stores, the Caddo Parish Sheriff's Office said, according to the CBS affiliate there, KSLA-TV. The station said a six-year-old and infant were in a car outside the laundromat when the high wind hit and their mother was insinde. All were said to be doing fine afterwards.

But a man who was also inside told the station, "It just came up. Twenty seconds later, it was gone. And I mean, total chaos, wind, I mean glass breaking out everywhere."

And in Arkansas, the Pike County Sheriff's Office reported "minor injuries after a possible tornado touched down" in Kirby.

"Lots of structural damage, fallen trees, and downed power lines," the office said.

More than 100,000 customers in Texas had no electricity Friday morning, according to PowerOutage.us, but that was down from 346,000 Thursday night.

FlightAware.com reported Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field had tallied more than 400 cancellations total, either to or from airports.

Several school districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area canceled after-school activities and events because of the forecast.

Forecasters said the storm system would continue its eastward march Friday, bringing the threat of severe weather into the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys. It was likely to produce snow across the eastern Great Lakes and New England later in the day.

Meteorologists say the same storm produced "once-in-a-generation" snow in California and Oregon with up to 7 feet accumulating in spots.

The snowfall, however, is credited with helping reduce, and in some areas eliminate, drought conditions in California.

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• Tornadoes