East Texas homes damaged, trees toppled by severe weather

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]We begin with strong [music] storms moving into East Texas. Take a look at this video. It looks to be pea-size hailstones raining down and just covering this front porch of Brenda Payne who lives at Holly Creek Lake just north of Hawkins. And take a look at this other video from Angie Gillette who lives in Quitman. You can barely make out the homes across the street from the strong winds and hail so forceful that leaves and branches are flying across the yard. And that's why we are going to begin with meteorologist John Adams.

[00:00:35]John, some of our East Texas counties are under a severe thunderstorm watch and as we just saw it is intense and on the way. What can we expect the timeline to be? Well, we will see continue to see these thunderstorms throughout the night and even into the overnight hours. A lot of the activity is out in the western part of the state where we have a severe thunderstorm watch in effect not including our East Texas area now, but it is likely we will see some type of a watch issued later tonight as thunderstorms move back into the area.

[00:01:07]We have seen activity in the southern part of the area crossing down into the northern sections of deep East Texas and moving across Toledo Bend. And we had activity earlier that along the Wood and Upshur County line did produce some of that activity you just saw pictures of there as we had up to quarter-size hail reported in the Quitman area as well as a number of trees down along the boundary there between Wood and Upshur counties. Now, we do have activity to the north that is moving along Interstate 30. A lot of that is north of Interstate 30, but it is beginning to move back into the area at this point.

[00:01:43]And as far as the activity in the south that is moving over into Louisiana.

[00:01:48]There is a severe thunderstorm warning across the border there in the central part of Louisiana. Well, here in East Texas we don't have any warnings or watches right now, but do expect to get some perhaps later on tonight. I'll be back with the rest of your forecast in just a few minutes.

[00:02:03]John, thank you so much. As the day goes by and our rain chances increase, [music] you can easily keep track by downloading our East Texas Storm Team app. With it, you will have access to our live radar [music] to track those rain showers in real time. You can also receive custom weather alerts for [music] your location and receive an hour-by-hour forecast.

[00:02:25]Scan the code right there on your screen [music] to download it from your phone's app store.