Tornado Kills at Least 4 in Texas Pandhandle Town

The Dollar General was a heap of splintered wood. A lone horse stood as if in shock next to a pile of debris. Entire blocks of the small Texas Panhandle town of Matador were completely leveled.

Val and Amy Castor, who are married, chase storms for a living for Channel 9 KWTV in Oklahoma, but the devastation they saw Wednesday night almost knocked them back.

In a phone interview, Mr. Castor described the scene. “Does anybody need help?” he said he had called out. A faint voice replied, “Hello.” The Castors found an older man pointing to the body of his wife, her face and shoulders submerged under rubble. “I think she’s already gone,” he said.

The woman, who was not identified by the authorities, was one of four people killed in a devastating tornado that injured nine others. A dayslong wallop of extreme heat and storms that had pummeled much of Texas and parts of Oklahoma culminated on Wednesday with a powerful tornado that swept through Matador, population 600, about 80 miles northeast of Lubbock.

Mr. Castor estimated that half of the town “was wiped out.”

On Thursday residents of the close-knit community sifted through piles of crumbled plywood, brick and mangled vehicles for any personal belongings. Much of the town remained without power Thursday afternoon, and officials were asking residents to use a senior center as a cooling center. Temperatures were expected to reach triple digits by Saturday. The local Methodist church was being used as a reunification center, officials said.

The tragedy came just a week after a ferocious series of storms swept across the South, spawning a tornado that killed five people, including three in the town of Perryton, Texas, about 200 miles north of Matador.

“It’s just heartbreaking,” said Derek Delgado, a spokesman for the Lubbock fire department, which was assisting with search-and-rescue operations in Matador.

The death toll was not expected to rise, officials said Thursday morning. But the extent of the losses was still coming into focus, as people found out how many of their neighbors had lost their homes. Many of those affected were staying with family members in nearby towns.

“It’s a tight-knit community, everyone knows everyone,” Sgt. Johnny Bures of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said.

Seven Alexander, 72, stood next to a motel, restaurant and a mobile park that have long been in the family and were now largely gone. On Thursday morning Ms. Alexander watched as crews began the long cleanup process. “I like new beginnings, just kind of hate to turn loose of the old,” she said.

Not far from her, another resident, Billy Campbell, walked past an American flag that waved in the wind, erected in the rubble as a sign of strength. As Mr. Campbell surveyed the damage on his ranch, he found precious belongings, including a hammer that had belonged to his father.

“We’ll get through it,” Mr. Campbell said. He added: “You have to be pretty tough to be ranchers and farmers. We’ll pull together and pull out of it.”

The storm that hit Matador was part of a system that lashed northern Texas and parts of Colorado with thunderstorms and sheets of hail. In Morrison, Colo., near Denver, a concert at the outdoor Red Rocks Amphitheater was delayed, then postponed, because of a hailstorm.

Parts of the region could see more extreme weather again on Thursday, mainly scattered thunderstorms and possibly damaging wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour, as well as “Ping-Pong-ball-size” hail and heavy rain. The chance of a tornado cannot be ruled out, forecasters said, especially in portions of Colorado.

Scientists say that tornadoes seem to be occurring in greater “clusters” in recent years, and that the area of the country known as Tornado Alley, where most tornadoes occur, seems to be shifting eastward.

The storms come as a heat dome has stalled over much of Texas and Oklahoma, with forecasts saying that it could last at least through the July 4 holiday. The heat is expected to become even more dangerous the longer it persists, forecasters with the Weather Prediction Center said.

Officials in Texas asked residents to conserve electricity amid concerns that several days of triple-digit temperatures could strain the power grid. In Oklahoma, nearly 70,000 homes and businesses remain without power, mainly in the Tulsa area, after storms over the weekend killed at least two people.

The lengthy heat wave has already brought record and dangerous triple-digit temperatures to much of Texas. This weekend it is expected to expand into Louisiana and next week north into Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Mr. Castor, the storm chaser from Oklahoma, said that after helping the man who lost his wife, he got back into his heavy-duty pickup truck and spotted near Matador two more tornadoes that posed no threat to nearby residences.

“Our job is to warn people about a tornado, unless we see a need to stop,” Mr. Castor said. “But this is the first time we’ve found someone in that condition. This is one of the worst we’ve seen.”

Reporting was contributed by Judson Jones, Eduardo Medina, Mike Ives and Claire Moses.