Winds in Pecos on Saturday afternoon didn't come close to their 1996 peak, but they still were strong enough to cause damage to a metal storage building and close a street on the city's east side. The 300 block of South Ash Street was closed to traffic beginning Saturday night and continuing all day Sunday because sheets of metal had blown off the old Foxworth-Galbraith building and fallen in the roadway. Octavio Garcia, the city's water department supervisor, said that he received a call from the police department on Saturday afternoon to erect barricades to close the street off while the high winds were still blowing because the flying debris was potentially dangerous to passing motorists. Garcia said that his crew removed some debris from the road when they went out to put up the barricades. The barricades were removed this morning, Garcia said.
Predictions fluctuate like a meteorologist's wind gauge.
William Monfredo, a graduate student at Mississippi State University in Starkville, is sanguine. Earning a master's degree in geoscience, he studies tornado data, El Nino statistics and atmospheric models. A factor or not, El Nino faces tough precedents. The planet's fiercest tornadoes touch down most often in the United States. From its Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded more than 38,000 segments - twisters that stay on a straight path between 1950 and 1995.