Tornadoes Punch Southeast Texas Towns : Weather: No deaths reported after the storms destroy mobile homes and cut power. Snow is the problem in many other parts of the nation.

Severe thunderstorms roared across southeastern Texas on Friday, producing tornadoes that damaged several homes, while light snow fell over Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

Authorities in Colorado and Harris counties in Texas reported property damage but no injuries or deaths from the twisters. Houston Lighting & Power Co. reported 13,000 customers were without power temporarily.

Tornadoes damaged a dozen mobile homes, destroying three of them in seconds in Jersey Village in northwest Harris County. American Red Cross workers helped families recover their scattered belongings from among the twisted aluminum and broken wood.

The National Weather Service lifted a tornado watch over the upper Texas Gulf Coast on Friday afternoon. Tornadoes were reported touching down near the Texas communities of Houston, Eagle Lake, Columbus, Katy and Lake Jackson.

Wind gusts as high as 63 m.p.h. were reported at Sholes Field-Galveston, and 70 m.p.h. at the San Luis Pass bridge, about 20 miles southwest of Galveston.

Karen Whitehead was at home with her 12-year-old son when the twister ripped their trailer home apart, but neither she nor her son was hurt.

“It was the wind that pulled the house apart, and he and I just ended out here in the middle of the yard unscathed, which I can’t believe. . . . It just happened so fast, that’s all I can tell you,” Whitehead said.

Lake Jackson police reported three tornadoes shortly before noon, one of which turned over a pickup truck parked in front of an office building. Officers also reported slight roof damage to an apartment building.

An unconfirmed tornado damaged four houses near Eagle Lake, a Colorado County sheriff’s dispatcher said. The Harris County Sheriff’s Department reported a tornado touched down twice in Katy.

High winds at the Cimarron Elementary School in Katy shattered windows and skylights. The school, which has kindergarten through fifth grade students, also lost its electricity, but no students were hurt.

The Texas Department of Public Safety reported a tornado struck the Maple Leaf Gardens subdivision in Houston. Residents of that subdivision and Inwood North subdivision in Harris County reported some property damage to homes.

“I’ve been in this house in a couple of hurricanes where the winds were 80 to 85 m.p.h., and this was a lot worse,” said Jerry Nowlin. “Shingles were blowing off roofs and hitting the windows. I’ve never been through a tornado before, but I guess that’s what this was. Trash cans were blowing through the air.”

Elsewhere, high wind warnings were issued Friday over the Rockies and the upper Yellowstone Valley of Montana. Warnings of gale force winds were also posted for Lake Erie and Lake Huron.

Snow was falling across eastern Idaho, a large portion of Michigan, north-central New York state, central Vermont, southern New Jersey and West Virginia.

The low temperature for the nation Friday morning was 16 degrees below zero at Gunnison, Colo.

Temperatures were seasonable across much of the country, ranging from the teens in the northern Great Plains to the 60s in Florida. Readings were in the 20s in the central Great Plains, the Rockies and the Northeast and the 30s in the Midwest, the Ohio Valley, the desert Southwest and parts of the South.