KINGSVILLE, Texas — Officials with the National Weather Service say Thursday night's severe weather was the result of a strong downburst over the City of Kingsville. Experts have ruled out the possibility that a tornado touched down during the storm.
The downburst produced 85-90 mile per hour winds that caused damage to various parts of Northwest Kingville. According to NWS most of the damage was focused around Corral Street.
According to 3News First Edition Meteorologist Alan Holt, a microburst, or downburst, is a core of rain cooled air that rapidly sinks to the ground. This pocket of air carries a lot of speed with it and can generate winds over 100mph - which the radar was indicating yesterday. These tend to be localized, affecting an area of 2-3 miles.
Power is still out for much of the City of Kingsville. AEP Texas is estimating that 95% of the customers without power should be restored by 8:00 p.m. Saturday. Crews have been working overnight and through Friday to restore power to as many people as possible. After the storm blew through, 9,600 customers were left in the dark.
Customers are able to look up the status of power outages by going to logging on to AEP Texas Outages.
