Stormy weather engulfs nation
DALLAS (AP) - March 7, 2008 The tornadoes touched down in the tiny coastal town of Keaton
Beach in Taylor County and Capitola in Leon County, a neighborhood
on the outskirts of Tallahassee, state emergency officials said.
Power lines were brought down, but there were no reports of
injuries or deaths.
Up to a foot of snow was possible in several areas in the
nation's midsection.
"It could get real nasty," said Dusty Harbage, a National
Weather Service meteorologist in Jackson in eastern Kentucky, a
region expected to be on the tail end of the wintry blast.
The snow in Texas came on top of a storm system Thursday that
left as much as 9 inches of snow on northern parts of the state and
brought a tornado to the south part of the state.
No one was injured by a twister packing 95 to 105 mph winds in
Corpus Christi on Thursday afternoon, but trees were snapped and
several homes were damaged, said Roger Gass, a National Weather
Service meteorologist in Corpus Christi.
The weather service said the Louisville, Ky., area could expect
8 to 12 inches of snow, starting Friday morning. The heaviest snow
is expected Friday night and early Saturday, when 4 to 5 inches
could fall within six or seven hours, said Joe Ammerman, a weather
service meteorologist in Louisville.
"It's not uncommon to get big snows in March," he said. "The
one good thing about that is it tends to warm up fairly fast and
the snow doesn't stay around very long."
In Arkansas, Weather Service forecaster John Lewis said
conditions in Little Rock could be particularly hazardous by Friday
evening.
The winter storm Thursday left slick roads in North Texas that
sent some school buses into ditches and hundreds of cars off the
roads.
South of Gainesville, several buses from the Callisburg school
district slid into ditches as students from all grades were being
taken home early Thursday because of the weather, Cooke County
Emergency Management Coordinator Ray Fletcher said.
The children walked out through the main doors except in one
case, where the bus slid onto its side and they had to escape
through a back door, he said. No injuries were reported.
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Associated Press writers Chuck Bartels in Little Rock, Ark., and
Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Ky., contributed to this report.
