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The National Weather Service confirmed that straight-line winds were the source of massive damage in Downtown Bertram, Texas.

BERTRAM, Texas — An already-damaged Texas town is bracing for another round of storms is in the forecast. This comes after the National Weather Service confirmed that straight-line winds were the source of massive damage in Downtown Bertram, Texas.

The small Texas town is located in Burnet County, about an hour west of Austin. Many of the older buildings in the downtown area took most of the damage, causing crews to close State Highway 29, the main road that runs through town, for several hours on March 23.

RELATED: 'What are we going to do?' | Downtown Bertram, businesses devastated by storm damage

The second system of the week in Central Texas is set to arrive Wednesday afternoon into the early morning hours of Thursday. The KVUE viewing area is under a enhanced (3/5) risk of severe weather. Isolated to scattered storms could produce large hail, strong winds and frequent lightning. An isolated tornado cannot be ruled out.

Here's a timeline of what to expect Wednesday and Thursday.

Be sure to download KVUE's app for updates and to check radar 24/7: kvue.com/app.

The day after the March 23 storm, KVUE flew its DroneVue over the town to survey the damage in Bertram. Thankfully, no injuries were reported in the overnight storm.

But businesses took a big hit.

Amanda Powell's business, Bertram Blend and Boutique, was devastated by the damage. Nearly half of the building was completely destroyed.

"Oh, my God. I mean, what are we going to do? I mean, this is our business," Powell said. "I've built it up, you know, from nothing. I've worked my butt off for it. Just like all these other businesses and Bertram, I mean, there's several businesses that have gotten affected by this."

Storm rips through Bertram, Texas

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Dennis Thomas, KVUE

A look at Bertram, Texas, the day after the town sustained serious damage in an overnight storm.

Powell told KVUE that the community has been reaching out to her to help.

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A coffee shop and cafe will soon replace Texas Pecan Cake Shop in a leased space inside the Joann Cole Mitte Memorial Library in Bertram. Burnet County Sheriff’s Office Livestock Deputy Jason Jewett plans to open the new cafe before summer starts.

The Burnet County Commissioners Court approved Jewett’s bid for the lease during its regular meeting on Feb. 28.

Jewett was the sole bidder at $951 per month. Texas Pecan Cake Shop has occupied the space since 2016, but owners Bridget and Will McCoy did not participate in the bidding process.

“A friend and I have talked about doing something along the lines of a coffee shop for a while, so we discussed it when I saw the bidding becoming available and thought we would try for it,” Jewett told DailyTrib.com. “It’s a great little space in the library, and we’re excited about being a part of the community, the library, and Bertram.”

Jewett will officially take over the lease on April 1 with a two-year contract and options to extend. He hopes to have the cafe up and running by May or June.

The Friends of the Bertram Library deeded the library to the county in May 2022.

“Once (the library) became publicly owned, (the leased space) had to go out for bid to give the public a fair opportunity,” Burnet County Auditor Karin Smith said. “The county had to. We can’t lease out space in a county building without it going for bid.”

The McCoys were notified of the bidding process six months in advance as per state law.

Public notice of the bidding opportunity was posted on the Burnet County website and in local newspapers in early February, giving a minimum of two weeks’ notice before bidding closed on Feb. 21.

The McCoys could not be reached for comment on future plans for Texas Pecan Cake Shop, but their business was closed indefinitely earlier this year due to Will McCoy’s battle with pancreatic cancer.

The Burnet County Commissioners Court approved additional overtime funding for mandatory jailer training during a special meeting on Monday, March 6. The money will bring six new jailers up to speed on state training requirements and help alleviate understaffing and overtime budget issues at the Burnet County Sheriff’s Office.

It could be one of the last times such funding is approved for county employees after the Commissioners Court voted to do away with overtime on Feb. 14. The new policy of compensatory time in lieu of overtime is expected to be implemented in June, changing the training schedule for new Sheriff’s Office staff.

“When (the commissioners) passed the (new overtime policy) on February the fourteenth, that you had to do your training (on the clock), we had nine people who would not be compliant on that,” BCSO Chief Deputy Alan Trevino told DailyTrib.com.

Trevino informed the court that the Sheriff’s Office had successfully trained three of the nine deputies, reducing the need for additional overtime funding. In the future, all training will be conducted on the clock, negating the need for additional funding. The remaining prospective jailers were in the midst of training, which they had to complete within 45 days of starting their jobs, according to current policy.

“We’ve changed the process,” Trevino explained. “The training will all be done on the clock, and we’ll be extending the training period by about three weeks to get it all done. It’s a matter of getting fully staffed, and we are moving in the right direction for that.”

Jailers are required to complete 120 hours of state training through the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. Each of the remaining new hires has completed their training to varying degrees, making it difficult to gauge the exact amount of overtime funds needed to meet state requirements.

The Commissioners Court approved a maximum of $17,622.48 for the overtime as a worst-case scenario number, according to County Auditor Karin Smith.

The issue of overtime and understaffing was addressed during the court’s Jan. 24 meeting after a report from Smith showed the Burnet County Jail had spent $57,945.44 on overtime when only $30,000 had been budgeted. That amounted to 193.5 percent of its allotted overtime budget with the year only 38 percent complete at the time. The jail and telecommunications department both fall under the umbrella of Sheriff’s Office management.

The jail was down 13 jailers at the time of Smith’s report. The personnel shortage led to staff taking on more shifts and covering for each other, which led to massive increases in accrued overtime.

“In the big picture, we’re just trying to get a handle on overtime and what’s causing it, because it’s exceeding the budgeted amount that was set up for it,” Judge James Oakley told DailyTrib.com after the meeting. “The same thing would happen if it was utility bills or fuel. It’s just a line item where the expenditures are greatly exceeding what was budgeted for.”

A Texas-made pizza favorite is finally making its way to Liberty Hill.

Mr. Gatti’s Pizza, which opened its first location in Austin in 1969, will soon have five locations in the Liberty Hill and Bertram region, thanks to Liberty Hill resident Jennifer Jensen, agent and co-owner of Pohl Jensen Partners Real Estate Group.

“I’m from Austin originally, and Mr. Gatti’s is what I grew up eating,” Jensen said. “Moving out to Liberty Hill, that was the one thing—I thought if we just could get Mr. Gatti’s out here, it would be great. That’s where the idea came from.”

Together with her dad and business partner, Bill Pohl, Jensen purchased the franchise rights for Mr. Gatti’s for the Liberty Hill and Bertram areas, which enables them to build up to five stores.

Jensen said four of those stores will be 1,200-square-foot delivery and carry-out locations, while the fifth location will be a full-blown Mr. Gatti’s Family Entertainment Center. Jensen added that the family entertainment center and two of the delivery and carry-out locations will take priority.

“Our intention is to put a 12,000-square-foot family entertainment center at the southeast corner of the intersection at [U.S. Highway] 183 and [State Highway] 29,” Jensen said. “There are two acres on the far northern piece of that property that we don’t own, but we are in negotiations for.”

At that exact same intersection, Pohl Jensen Partners Real Estate Group is heading up a major mixed-use development project that spans 106 acres and will soon be home to several big box retailers, quick-service restaurants, multi-family housing and more, so adding in Mr. Gatti’s was a natural fit, Jensen said. (See Major development planned for US 183 intersection | News | lhindependent.com.)

“I’m particularly excited about the family entertainment center, because I want our community to have somewhere to have things like team parties or birthdays or business luncheons,” Jensen added. “I want it to be a fun place where parents can relax with a pitcher of beer after a baseball tournament and kids can get pizza and play games.”

The family entertainment center is in the design process right now, Jensen said, but it will include an arcade, big screen TVs, a pizza buffet and party rooms.

“We want to make sure we are delivering the perfect footprint for this community and can accommodate all the families, so the design process is important to us, and that footprint could change,” she added.

For the delivery and carry-out locations, Jensen said there will be two in Liberty Hill and eventually, two in Bertram. The first locations to be built out will be the two in Liberty Hill, with one on the east side of town and the other on the west side. The addresses for those locations have not been set.

“There’s so many people on the east side of Ronald Reagan Boulevard in Santa Rita, Morningstar, Bar W—a delivery and carry-out location will capture all of those neighborhoods, and then we want one on the west side of town, so we don’t saturate the market, but so we are adequately locating enough stores for the community.”

After the two Liberty Hill locations open, Jensen said the focus will turn to Bertram and building two locations there. But first, Jensen wants to get the Liberty Hill locations open as soon as possible.

The tentative timeline will be to open the Mr. Gatti’s on the west side of town by the end of 2023 and the one on the east side of town in early 2024. She also hopes to see dirt turning at the site of the Mr. Gatti’s family entertainment center later this year.

“I’d like to anticipate an opening there of late 2023, but it’ll most likely be the first quarter of 2024,” she said. “I like to live optimistically, and I’m encouraged by how things are going so far.”

For more information on Mr. Gatti’s, visit mrgattispizza.com.

Locals in Bertram, Texas, were left devastated after a destructive storm hit on March 22, leaving many buildings in the downtown area with significant structural damage.

It only takes one.

Less than a week after a worrisome severe weather outbreak threatened states throughout the South and placed millions in danger, it was a separate, seemingly minor night of strong winds that nearly turned disastrous in Bertram, Texas, Monday night.

A survey team from the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed that the storm that ripped through Bertram was not a tornado, but the damage left in its wake is shocking. The culprit was straight-line winds. These powerful winds scattered debris throughout the Hill County town and multiple businesses were left in ruins.

Within the town, multiple buildings, including one historic location, were damaged Monday night. The Bertram Blend and Boutique, owned by Amanda Powell, was opened just two years ago, but is now reduced to rubble.

The storm shortly before 10 p.m., local time, according to reports from the NWS Storm Prediction Center (SPC).

"Oh my God. I mean, what are we going to do? I mean, this is our business," Powell told KVUE. "I've built it up, you know, from nothing. I've worked my butt off for it. Just like all these other businesses in Bertram," she continued, noting that several local businesses were impacted by the storm.

Next to Powell's boutique, the historic A.B McGill & Co. building was also completely destroyed. According to jeffreyhayes.com, the building was constructed nearly 150 years ago in 1871, predating the establishment of the town of Bertram itself.

Elsewhere in town, the area's library had all of its windows destroyed and many other buildings were damaged.

Emily Ann Cavalcanti, a Bertram resident, walked through her disheveled town late Monday night with a camera, capturing footage and narrating the destruction during a haunting live stream on her Facebook page. Along with panning over Powell’s boutique, which Cavalcanti recalls having been an old barbecue spot, she documented destruction to the library and at A.B. McGill.

“This is the A.B. McGill building, guys,” she can be heard saying in the video. “Or what was the A.B. McGill building. Just absolutely sickening.”

While Bertram was the only area to see extensive damage, other portions of Texas got a share of notable weather Monday night as well. In the western portion of the state, strong wind gusts greater than 75 mph were recorded in multiple areas while reports of hail dotted the central areas of Texas.

In all, a total of 30 hail reports were submitted to the SPC, with golf ball-sized ice chunks denting cars, covering roads and breaking lights in numerous places.

With multiple days of cleanup left ahead for the area, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Houk said conditions should be helpful for the Texas residents this week, although not for their neighbors to the east.

Tuesday's cleanup efforts will happen under sunny and dry conditions, and while thunderstorms may come this week, they are not expected to be severe.

"An upper-level storm and its cold front will move into the area tomorrow night and move away Thursday morning," Houk said. "Although there will be a couple of showers and thunderstorms that move through during this time, it looks like they will remain mostly scattered."

Farther east, however, the coming days are likely to be anything but pleasant.

Monday night was just the first round of a stretch of multiple days of severe weather that are forecast to strike Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee with heavy rain and severe thunderstorms.

According to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski, "all facets of severe weather will be possible on Thursday" of this week, including the chance for isolated tornadoes in the Mississippi River Delta region.

Bertram residents, who got the first taste of that outbreak, will certainly know how to relate.

"This was my favorite building," a passerby can be heard telling Cavalcanti as she walked by the destroyed historic general store.

"I know," Cavalcanti said. "It's so sad."

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier, Spectrum, FuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios.

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The Bertram Food Pantry has added evening hours to better serve the community, and organizers are hosting a celebration to let people know.

UPDATE: An open house for the pantry, 520 Texas 29 East in Bertram, is 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday, May 27, and includes music, refreshments, and games. (Editor’s note: It was originally scheduled for May 20 but postponed due to bad weather in the forecast.)

“I don’t know what happened, but our (client) numbers have gone down, so we just want to remind people that we’re here,” said the pantry’s Janet Widmer. “And that we’re here to help.”

The food pantry’s hours are 1-3 p.m. and 5:30-7 p.m. Thursdays. Initially, the facility was only open in the mid-afternoon, but Widmer said many clients couldn’t get to the pantry during the day.

“A lot of people are working,” she said. “Or, they’re a one-car family.”

The pantry serves residents in the Bertram and Briggs ZIP codes of 78605 and 78608. That includes a wide expanse of land and people.

The pantry is small by some standards, but staff and volunteers make up for that with their caring hearts. Volunteer Jane Scheidler pointed out that they don’t just box items for clients.

“You know, they may not want or need some of the things in (the box),” she said. “We let them go ‘shopping.’”

A volunteer actually takes the food from the shelves and places it in a bag or box for the client, but the person gets to pick what they need.

“We really try to help preserve their dignity,” Widmer said.

She noted that the people the pantry helps often return the gesture when they can. She recalled one man who came in on a regular basis, always with a smile and a joke. He used a wheelchair for most of his trips, but one day, Widmer heard a knock on the door. When she opened it, there he stood leaning on a cane — no wheelchair.

The man returned several times, often with donations for the pantry.

“That’s what we’re here for, for people like him,” Widmer said.

The crew does more than wait for people to show up at the pantry. During the February winter storms, a snowbound mother with several children reached out via Facebook to see if anyone had baby formula and diapers. She couldn’t get out to get any.

Widmer’s husband traversed the icy weather to the pantry, grabbed baby formula and diapers, and delivered them to the woman.

Along with providing canned and non-perishable food items, the pantry started growing fresh vegetables last year in a small garden adjacent to the facility.

The pantry is located behind Holy Cross Catholic Church in Bertram. Check the Bertram Food Pantry Facebook page for updates and more information.

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