“If you really think about it, the fact that everybody who woke up in Forney yesterday is alive today in Forney, that’s a real blessing,” Mayor Darren Rozell said.

The National Weather Service is investigating the damage caused by the tornadoes, which appeared to flatten some homes and graze others next door. The twisters jumped from place to place, passing many heavily populated areas overhead and perhaps limiting what could have been a more damaging, deadly storm. Most of Dallas was spared the full wrath of the storms.

While tornadoes can strike major cities, having two major systems strike a single metropolitan area is highly unusual, meteorologist Jesse Moore said. The Texas twisters would have done more damage had they stayed on the ground for more of the storms’ path. But weather experts and officials credited the quick response to tornado warnings for preventing deaths or more injuries.

In the Diamond Creek subdivision where Enochs’ home was destroyed, residents put on work gloves Wednesday and began cleaning up. Many noticed things in their yards that didn’t belong to them.

Enochs doesn’t have a clear memory of exactly how things happened Tuesday, but she was found holding her grandson in the bathtub, which had blown into the area where her garage once was. A 3-year-old she was watching was found wandering around the backyard. A neighbor pulled another child Enochs had been taking care of, 19-month-old Abigail Jones, from the rubble.

“I heard the rumbling from the tornado and I didn’t even hear the house fall,” Enochs said.

Abigail was taken to the hospital but released. The blonde, smiling child with bows in her hair was bruised not just on her check and forehead but all over her body, but not seriously hurt. Her mother, Misty Jones, brought her back Wednesday to see what had happened.

Seven people were injured in Forney, none seriously. An additional 10 people were hurt in Lancaster, south of Dallas, and three people in Arlington, west of Dallas.

National Weather Service crews in Forney, east of Dallas, spotted storm damage that suggested the twister there was an EF3, with wind speeds as high as 165 mph. Other tornadoes in Arlington and Lancaster appear to have been EF2 tornadoes, with wind speeds up to 135 mph. Tornadoes can range from EF0, the weakest, to EF5, the strongest. An EF2 or higher is considered a significant tornado.

A twister can hit one spot and continue for miles before touching down again, Moore said. It’s difficult to explain why a tornado touches down when it does.

“It can destroy one house and the one across the street is fine. It can go back up for a mile or two and drop back down,” Moore said. “That’s all the crazy things that can happen with tornadoes.”

Randy McKeever and his wife and several of their friends sorted through what was left of their house Wednesday. Their roof was completely gone. The front yard was littered with shingles and pieces of wood. Inside was a jumble of belongings. McKeever, 47, wore work gloves as he tried to find anything that could be salvaged.

“There’s a bunch of stuff in there that’s not even ours,” he said.

Stunning video from Dallas showed big-rig trailers tossed into the air and spiraling like footballs. An entire wing of an Arlington nursing home crumbled. In Lancaster, dozens of young children cowered in the safe room of a day care near a local church. The storm pulled one of the walls back “like you were peeling an orange,” day care director Danita Harris said.

The students were moved further indoors and rode out the rest of the storm safely, she said.

“Not one Band-Aid had to be applied,” Harris said.

Hundreds of flights into and out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Dallas Love Field were canceled or diverted elsewhere Tuesday. American Airlines, which operates most flights at the airport, said it canceled more than 400 flights Wednesday after stopping about 800 Tuesday. An airport spokesman said more than 110 planes were damaged by hail.

April is typically the worst month in a tornado season that stretches from March to June, but Tuesday’s outburst suggests that “we’re on pace to be above normal,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop.

Gov. Rick Perry plans an aerial tour of the damage on Thursday.

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Associated Press writers Schuyler Dixon in Arlington; Diana Heidgerd, Terry Wallace and David Koenig in Dallas; Betsy Blaney in Lubbock; and Paul Weber in San Antonio contributed to this report.

The coalition says their mission of protecting and maintaining the trees is becoming more urgent year by year.

“We feel time pressure to let people see these wonderful trees before they are gone,” said Mary Graves, the group’s president.

The coalition has recognized four marker trees in Texas and is investigating reports of some 32 others across the state. The group also serves to celebrates the heritage the trees represent, Houser said.

The Jasper, Ga.-based nonprofit Mountain Stewards has been compiling a database of the trees since 2007, documenting about 1,850 Indian marker trees in 39 states.

Those who research the trees have a verification process, as they must be old enough — at least 150 to 200 years old. It also helps if scars can be found that would indicate it had been tied down. Sometimes, the researchers consult with tribes for confirmation.

“Mother Nature can bend a tree and it can look in some cases almost like an Indian tree,” said Don Wells, the president of Mountain Stewards. He says people contact the group about three to five times a week to inquire about whether an oddly shaped tree is a marker tree, he said.

Dennis Downes, an Antioch, Ill.,-based artist and sculptor who founded the Great Lakes Trail Marker Tree Society, released a book last fall called “Native American Trail Marker Trees,” which chronicles more than 30 years of documenting and photographing the trees across the United States.

He drove several hundred thousands of miles over the years, pored over books that might give clues as to where to find the trees, talked to locals and researched the locations of old American Indian trails.

“Once people figure it out, they’re amazed,” said Downes, who also makes the trees frequent subjects of his sculptures.

In Colorado, most of the bent ponderosa pines at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument point in the direction of Pikes Peak, the landmark about 8 miles away that was considered a sacred site by the Ute Indians, said park ranger Jeff Wolin.

“They are living archeology,” said Rick Wilson, Florissant’s chief ranger, who added that they speculate the Utes bent the trees to mark a trail to Pikes Peak.

Trail trees don’t adhere to one specific shape. In North Texas, the Comanches bent them in a low, half-moon shape that runs parallel to the ground before shooting up. In other places, the trees bend at a 90-degree angle a few feet from the ground with the trunk running parallel to the ground for a few feet before bending again up toward the sky.

Wallace Coffey, former chairman Comanche Nation in Lawton, Okla., has consulted with the Dallas Historic Tree Coalition.

“It’s something that you want to hug and say, ‘Hey, there was a time in your life when you were special to us and now you are still special and look how beautiful you are,’ ” Coffey said.

He said many of the marker trees in Texas probably helped Comanche warriors as they battled the U.S. military.

“There were times when our warriors would seek refuge and these marker trees directed them to certain locations where there’s an abundance of water, shelter, animals,” Coffey said.

Earl Otchingwanigan, a member of the Ojibwe tribe, said he’d heard about the trees while growing up on a reservation on Lake Superior. Last year, he discovered one in a park near his Crystal Falls, Mich., home after his wife spotted a tree that resembled the letter ‘N’ on a walk.

“A lot of people don’t recognize what they are and they’re a really important part of the history of this country,” said Otchingwanigan, a professor emeritus at Bemidji State University in Minnesota.

Coffey said he’s heartened by people paying attention to the Indian marker trees.

“When I hear people are interested in it, I think they are starting to understand that there are a lot of messages on this earth that people cannot take for granted anymore,” he said.

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Online:

Dennis Downes’ site: http://www.trailmarkertree.com

Mountain Stewards, http://www.mountainstewards.org

Dallas Historic Tree Coalition, http://www.dhtc.org