25 Unbelievable Pictures Of The Tornadoes That Hit The Dallas/Fort Worth Area

ARLINGTON, Texas — The tornado hurtled toward the nursing home. Physical therapist Patti Gilroy said she saw the swirling mass barreling down through the back door, after she herded patients into the hallway in the order trained: walkers, wheelchairs, then beds.

"It wasn't like a freight train like everybody says it is," said Gilroy, who rounded up dozens to safety at Green Oaks Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. "It sounded like a bomb hit. And we hit the floor, and everybody was praying. It was shocking."

The National Weather Service said as many as a dozen twisters touched down in a wrecking-ball swath of violent weather that stretched across Dallas and Fort Worth. The destructive reminder of a young tornado season Tuesday left thousands without power and hundreds of homes pummeled or worse.

As the sun rose Wednesday over the southern Dallas suburb of Lancaster, one of the hardest hit areas, it was clear that twisters had bounced in and out of neighborhoods, destroying homes at random. Vehicles were tossed like toys, coming to rest in living rooms and bedrooms.

At one house, a tornado had seemingly dipped into the building like an immersion blender, spinning directly down through an upstairs bedroom and wreaking havoc in the family room below before lifting straight back up and away. A grandfather clock leaned slightly but otherwise stood pristine against a wall at the back of the downstairs room that was filled with smashed furniture and fallen support beams.

Despite the intensity of the slow-moving storms, only a handful of people were hurt, a couple of them seriously, and no fatalities were reported as of late Tuesday.

The Red Cross estimated that 650 homes were damaged. Around 150 Lancaster residents stayed in a shelter Tuesday night.

"I guess `shock' is probably a good word," Lancaster Mayor Marcus Knight said.

The exact number of tornadoes won't be known until surveyors have fanned across North Texas, looking for clues among the debris that blanketed yards and rooftops peeled off slats. Knight said city officials and weather experts were surveying the stricken areas Wednesday.

April is typically the worst month in a tornado season that stretches from March to June, but Tuesday's outburst suggests that "we're on pace to be above normal," said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop.

An entire wing at the Green Oaks nursing home in Arlington crumbled. Stunning video from Dallas showed big-rig trailers tossed into the air and spiraling like footballs. At the Cedar Valley Christian Center church in Lancaster, Pastor Glenn Young said he cowered in a windowless room with 30 children from a daycare program, some of them newborns.

Ten people in Lancaster were injured, two of them severely, said Lancaster police officer Paul Beck. Three people were injured in Arlington, including two Green Oaks residents taken to a hospital with minor injuries, Arlington Assistant Fire Chief Jim Self said.

Gilroy said the blast of wind through Green Oaks lasted about 10 seconds. She described one of her co-workers being nearly "sucked out" while trying to get a patient out of the room at the moment the facility was hit.

Joy Johnston was also there, visiting her 79-year-old sister.

"Of course the windows were flying out, and my sister is paralyzed, so I had to get someone to help me get her in a wheelchair to get her out of the room," she said.

In one industrial section of Dallas, rows of empty tractor-trailers crumpled like soda cans littered a parking lot.

"The officers were watching the tornadoes form and drop," Kennedale police Chief Tommy Williams said. "It was pretty active for a while."

Most of Dallas was spared the full wrath of the storm. Yet in Lancaster, television helicopters panned over exposed homes without roofs and flattened buildings. Residents could be seen walking down the street with firefighters and peering into homes, looking at the damage after the storm passed.

Hundreds of flights into and out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field were canceled or diverted elsewhere Tuesday. About 500 flights remained grounded Wednesday, airport officials said.

The storms knocked out power for thousands. Utility Oncor said nearly 14,000 homes and businesses, mainly in the Arlington area, still had no electricity early Wednesday.

Meteorologists said the storms were the result of a slow-moving storm system centered over northern New Mexico.

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A Texas grandmother explained today how she piled three children into a bathtub to survive a rampaging tornado and hung on to a toddler's feet as the twister tried to suck the boy into its vortex.

When the nightmare was over the house where Sherry Enochs was holed up was little more than "wood and debris piled up," she and three children she was babysitting were covered in mud and Enochs had a nailed speared into her foot, but they were alive.

Enochs' story is one of the more remarkable ones to come out of the Texas tornadoes that triggered remarkable destruction, but caused no deaths.

Enochs was babysitting her 18-month-old grandson Lane, Abigail Jones, 19 months, and another child when she spotted a monster tornado headed towards the home of her daughter Lindsey in the town of Forney.

"I didn't have very long. I was looking out my bedroom window and I saw it coming across the fields and I was on the phone with my daughter and she told me, 'Mom, you probably need to go take cover,'" Enochs told ABC News.

"So I grabbed them up with a comforter and got them in the bathtub and just sat in there until it got over."

"There was a gush of wind come through and I just feel like it was taking him and I just grabbed him harder just to keep him there with me. It was really hard," Enochs said.

She described hanging on to Lane's feet in a tug of war with an enraged Mother Nature until she was finally able to pull him back into the tub.

"She held on to his feet, just by his feet," Lindsey Enochs told ABC News. "And the wind kept taking him, but she held on to him. And he's fine. He's here."

Enochs said the children were "pretty quiet" during the storm. "I was kind of worried about Lane because he was not saying anything and I had said his name and he looked up at me and I knew he was okay and the other kids were fine," she said.

When it was over, "The little girl was covered in mud and Lane had the mud up his nose and in his face. I don't know how that happened."

Lindsey Enochs rushed home after the tornado passed and when she saw her home, the fourth building on the block, she feared the worst.

"I started counting houses. I counted the first house, it was standing. The second house was standing, the third house was standing. And then I got to our fourth house and it was not standing. There was nothing there, just wood and debris piled up," Lindsey Enochs said.

"I don't see how they made it out at all," she said. "Then there was just so much joy when I found out that they were okay. I just couldn't believe it. It was a miracle."

Forney was one of the towns hit hardest by Tuesday's twisters and are cleaning up along with Lancaster and other areas. About 650 homes were damaged in Tuesday's Texas tornado outbreak.

The warnings of severe weather have moved on with parts of the southern Plains, western Ozarks and lower Mississippi Valley at risk this week.

The National Weather Service has predicted chances of severe thunderstorms across parts of the mid-Mississippi and Ohio Valleys today, which might include large hail, damaging winds and isolated tornadoes. Parts of the southeastern United States might also experience severe weather, according to the weather service.

A severe-storm warning was given for New Orleans overnight as more rain moved in and flooding began on some city streets, with reports of 2 to 3 feet of water on roads. A possible tornado touched down in Gentilly, La., early today, while a roof was blown off a house.

Peak tornado season in the southern states is March through May, while in the northern U.S. states storms rattle regions from late spring through early summer. April is typically the worst period for the South, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop.

As a tornado ripped through the operating facility for Schneider National, a trucking company, it tossed 30,000-pound trucks high into the air, spinning them around before smashing them to the ground hundreds of yards away. Flattened and crumpled trailers littered the area in the aftermath of the twister.

Robert Cluck, the mayor of Arlington, Texas, declared a state of emergency to last for up to seven days, citing "widespread and severe damage."

The city also set up a disaster center. A disaster area was also declared by local officials in Lancaster, Texas, where about 300 homes were damaged.

"I guess shock is probably a good word," Lancaster Mayor Marcus Knight said Tuesday.

American Airlines canceled more than 450 arriving and departing flights at its hub, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, by Tuesday afternoon. Airport spokesman David Magaña told WFAA that more than 110 planes were damaged by hail.