DALLAS, Texas (AP) - Maintenance crews worked Thursday to clear roads after a storm dumped several inches of hail on parts of the Texas Panhandle, trapping motorists in muddy drifts that were waist-to-shoulder high.
The storm left so much hail in its wake that workers had to use snow plows to clear the piles from the road.
"It was crazy," National Weather Service Meteorologist Justyn Jackson said about the strange storm, which hit Wednesday afternoon. The hail was "real small" but there was a lot of it in a concentrated area, accumulating 2- to 4-feet deep, he said.
The rural area where the storm struck was mainly ranch land, about 25 miles north of Amarillo and south of Dumas. Rainwater gushed across the parched land, washing dirt and then mud into the hail, pushing it all onto U.S. 287, Potter County Sheriff Brian Thomas said.
The southbound lane of the highway, which was shut down around 5 p.m. Wednesday, finally reopened early Thursday morning, shortly after midnight though water remained on the road until around 5 a.m., said Paul Braun, a Texas Department of Transportation spokesman in Amarillo.