WINONA, Texas — Winona and Big Sandy ISDs will start classes later Tuesday morning due to power outages.
WISD Superintendent Damenion Miller said in an email that school will start at 10 a.m. because of a city wide power outage. Miller later said power has been restored and will move forward with a 10 a.m. start time.
At Big Sandy, classes will also be delayed until 10 a.m. because of no power at the district's main building. Kids who are on the bus will be brought home and if no one is home, they'll go to the high school gym, where there is power.
Big Sandy ISD said the district will share updates as information becomes available.
This comes after the National Weather Service out of Shreveport confirmed a tornado touched down in Winona Monday morning.
Smith County Fire Marshal Jay Brooks said around 10:36 a.m., a deputy spotted the twister land on the Winona High School football field. He said it caused damage on Hussey Cir. and Johnson Rd. in Winona.
According to Fire Marshal Brooks, the Winona ISD police chief said the school was briefly placed on lockdown, but returned to its regular schedule around 11 a.m.
Miller said the students and staff sheltered into place quickly as the tornado came near the school district.
"And from there, we began to hear the the weather alerts come out at that time, and from what I could tell a tornado touchdown very close to the high school campus [but] did not do much damage to our high school buildings, but we had some outlier facilities that we're damaged," Miller said.
Miller said the outlier facilities that were damaged were a storage building built by students, the baseball field home side dugout roof, a greenhouse and another storage building.
Smith County Pct. 4 Constable Josh Joplin said the reported cyclone took down a fence perimeter of the city water tower, destroyed a modular building, and threw football equipment from the football field into a nearby pasture. He also spotted a portable building lying in the middle of Johnson Road.
Joplin said the storm appeared to have spun up on Johnson Road, traveled across the Winona High School field, over to Hussey Circle and moved north toward Big Sandy. He also noted quite a bit of damage in the Hussey Circle neighborhood.