By Jon Herskovitz
AUSTIN, Texas, May 28 (Reuters) - The National Weather Service issued a new flash flood watch on Thursday for large parts of Texas, where severe weather this week has left at least 16 people dead, damaged thousands of structures and flooded cities such as Houston and Austin.
The warning stretches from south of San Antonio to Dallas, through Oklahoma, where severe weather this week killed an additional six people, and into Kansas. Thunderstorms pelted large parts of the affected region on Thursday morning.
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In Texas, the latest victim of the deadly storms that brought flooding on Monday was a boy whose body was recovered near the central city of San Marcos, Hays County officials said.
The boy, who has not been identified, was thought to have been swept away in Blanco River floods that ripped houses off their foundations, county officials said. There were nine people missing in the county after the flooding.
At least six people were killed by the severe weather in Houston, where flooding turned streets into rivers in the fourth largest U.S. city and left more than a thousand vehicles submerged at one point in rushing waters.
There was no damage estimate available for Texas, which has a $1.4 trillion-a-year economy and is the country's main domestic source of energy as a well as an agricultural and manufacturing power. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
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Before You Go
1
Super cells
Barcroft Media via Getty Images
This ominous cloud is a super cell: a thunderstorm with a a deep, rotating updraft, called a mesocyclone. They are rare, severe storms and can change the weather up to 30 kilometres away.
2
Brinicles or "the icy finger of death"
Alamy
Eerily referred to as the "icy finger of death, brinicles are like underwater icicles. They appear beneath sea ice when a flow of very cold water mixes with other ocean water. Sea ice is very different from ice on land: it's spongelike in texture. When it touches the sea bed, a web of ice can form that freezes everything it touches, including creatures like starfish.
3
Volcanic lightning or 'dirty thunderstorms'
SUTANTA ADITYA via Getty Images
It's an awesome display when lightning and volcanic eruptions collide. Scientists believe that a volcano emits a large electrical charge, so an opposite charge is created to balance this out - in the form of a lightning bolt.
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4
Weatherbomb
Photography by Tim Bow via Getty Images
The weatherbomb was the original strangely-named weather phenomena to blast Britain recently. The catacylsmic weather event - bringing strong winds and heavy rain - is officially known as an extratropical cyclone, a strong cyclone that forms after a rapid fall in pressure within a storm. The process that creates it is known as bombogenesis.
5
Sundogs
August Allen/Flickr
This slightly mystical effect is a sundog, also known as a parhelia or mock sun. It happens when light interacts with ice crystals in the atmosphere. Two bright spots appear either side of the sun, at the same height. Sun dogs are often seen with what's called a 22º halo - a ring around the sun formed from light refracting off ice crystals at a 22º angle.
6
Ice volcanoes
Michigan Tech University Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences Department
Ice volcanoes erupt with icy water rather than lava, and occur when water and and ice are close together. When waves hit a shell of ice in a weak spot, a hole forms, spewing water and sleet high into the air. They regularly form around the Great Lakes in the Northern USA.
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7
Blue jets, sprites and elves
Wikipedia
Their names sound magical, and these optical phenomena are something special. They were only recently recorded using low-light television technology. They are the result of the fallout from thunderstorms: the sprite is a red flash that appears above the storm when lightning hit, while the elf is a halo which can appear even higher up when the storm generates an electromagnetic pulse - lasting for less than a thousandth of a second. The blue jet is a streak that looks like a falling star, and is in fact an electrical ejection from the core of a thunderstorm.
8
Vortex shedding
Vortex shedding occurs when the wind hits a mechanical system - such as the lamp posts on this motorway - at a specific frequency, causing the system to “excite” . They vibrate and move, which is pretty frightening for the drivers in this case.
9
Snow doughnuts
ASSOCIATED PRESS
These amusingly-named lumps form when there is a hard layer of snow covered by several more inches of dense snow. On a hill, gravity pulls the hard lump, downwards, gathering more bulk as it rolls. With the perfect density and temperature, it rolls leaving a hole in the centre.
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10
Snow rollers
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A cousin of the now doughnut, these odd-shaped natural snowballs form when high winds roll snow over open areas.
11
Waterspouts or "sea monsters"
ASSOCIATED PRESS
When a tornado is generated over water, this is what happens. The funnel-shaped cloud is connected to a larger cloud above. Although it looks like they suck up water, they don't exactly: although a "spray ring" forms and some spray rises up the air tunnel.
12
Mammatus clouds
Dennis Stacey via Getty Images
These bizarre pouches of cloud, which can look like hundreds of white balloons have been released into the sky, are a true mystery. Scientists don't know how they form, but have several theories. It could be due to a cooling of part of the cloud which causes it to drop down, an unstable cloud where "cloudy" air doesn't mix fully with dry air, or possibly gravity waves which move part of the cloud away.
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13
Dust devils
NBC via Getty Images
The dust devil is a strong whirlwind, which sucks up dust and debris, making it visible. The devils are smaller than tornadoes - less than 100 feet tall - and form differently. They come into being when light winds move over a hot surface and convective rolls of air are formed, meaning a desert is a common location for dust devils.
14
Giant hailstones
SEBASTIAN WILLNOW via Getty Images
As the name suggest, these are really, really big hailstones. They are sometimes called "ice bombs" and tend to shatter when they hit the ground. One of the largest ever recorded was seen in Vivian, South Dakota, in the US in 2010. It was 8 inches in diameter and weighed nearly 2 pounds.
15
Lenticular clouds
Hans Neleman via Getty Images
Lenticular clouds are stationary, lens-shaped cloud - but people often mistake them for UFOs as they also look rather like saucers. High altitudes are needed for them to appear, and they usually form at right-angles to the wind direction, when stable moist steams of air move over a formation like a mountain.
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16
Roll clouds
Daniela Mirner Eberl
These solitary clouds seem to rotate around a horizontal axis, and aren't linked to any other formations. They are are usually formed by cold, wet air flowing out of sea breezes or cold fronts. The most famous is Australia's 'Morning Glory' cloud, which appears regularly in October in Queensland thanks to the sea breezes that develop over the Cape York Peninsula.
17
Thundersnow
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thundersnow burst into the consciousness of the British public when storms battered us from late 2014. As the name suggests, it's snow that falls during a thunderstorm, a rare occurrence caused when cold air passes over a warm sea. Thunderstorms are produced by moist air rising, which hardly ever happens at temperatures low enough to allow snowfall.