AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Another round of thunderstorms was moving across Central and Southeast Texas on Saturday as crews search the Austin area for two people missing from flash floods.
Teams from the National Weather Service were to examine three areas Saturday where tornadoes were thought to have wreaked havoc on Friday.
Two people were known to have died – one in Austin and one near San Antonio – when they were swept away by rapidly rising flood waters. However, a man and a woman were still unaccounted in separate incidents in the Austin area on Friday.
The storms and suspected tornadoes have socked an already-sodden swath of Texas that was still drying out from the remnants of Hurricane Patricia, forcing evacuations of flood-prone areas and slowing or shutting down traffic on long stretches of Interstate 35.
More than 16 inches of rain soaked one neighborhood and Austin Bergstrom International Airport suspended all flights after a half-foot of water flooded the air traffic control tower. A lazy creek cutting through Texas wine country swelled into a rushing torrent, sending eight members of a vacationing church group scrambling to a second floor before they were rescued by the National Guard.