Tornado-warned storms barreling through southern US

AccuWeather

Storm chaser Dr. Reed Timmer, reporting from Alford, Florida, updates his travels storm chasing through the southern U.S, which is being pounded by tornado-warned storms on Jan. 9.

Transcript

00:00 Reid, good morning. You've had yourself quite the night and quite the day. What have you seen so far?

00:05 Yeah, it's been a wild overnight. I've been on three renegade supercells so far. Those are the

00:12 supercells that fire out ahead of the squall line and they came in off the Gulf of Mexico.

00:16 The first one was in Pensacola and that just had winds up above 80, 90 miles an hour. It

00:21 went tornado warned. I think it produced a tornado over the marshes just to the northeast of Pensacola

00:26 and the next storm I got on making landfall at Santa Rosa Beach and that one knocked out the

00:32 power. I felt a huge surge of wind and then that one went on to produce a tornado that impacted

00:37 Fountain, Florida and there was some damage in that town on the east side of town. Quite a bit

00:41 of damage. Trees down, smaller homes that were flipped as well. I saw a mobile home flipped

00:46 into the east of Fountain and then that other supercell that made landfall down at Panama City

00:51 did some damage as well and then that blocks my path off to the northeast but these storms

00:56 are moving really fast. 50 to 60 miles an hour and the low-level jet out here is faster than I've

01:02 probably seen since the super outbreak of April 27, 2011. Not going to say that's going to happen

01:07 today because the instability is a lot lower but these clouds are just ripping at 70 plus miles

01:13 per hour just above the ground. Almost looks like you could touch the clouds up there and that's the

01:17 low-level wind shear that is creating these tornadoes today. You just saw the power flicker

01:21 out here even. That's just from the low-level jet from these little super showers going by

01:26 mixing down those damaging winds. You know, Reid, I want to talk about you for a second because for

01:30 people who've never seen your work before, your level of dedication is like nothing I've ever

01:35 seen. My friend, have you gone to sleep yet since yesterday since you started chasing these storms?

01:40 I haven't had an opportunity to sleep last night but unfortunately I just I can't fall asleep when

01:46 I'm in an active tornado warning or the warm sector and had to chase all night. The timing of

01:51 this event just happened in the middle of the night which is also the most dangerous because

01:55 a lot of times people are asleep, storms are moving really fast and at least now we have some daylight

02:00 and people are awake to know that the tornado threat's coming to their location. So important,

02:05 you did mention those overnight tornadoes. Look, I lived in the southeast for a time. I lived

02:09 in middle Tennessee and we know all about tornadoes in that part of the country and those

02:13 late night cells, those early morning cells can oftentimes be the most deadly because people are

02:17 asleep. Make sure that everyone's putting on those watches and warnings this morning. Reid,

02:20 I've got to ask you for you, what comes next? Where are you going? I'm going to head northeast

02:26 and stay ahead of this line and look for more development of those renegade supercells and

02:30 then I'll probably cut north of the flash flood threat in upstate South Carolina where there's

02:34 a moderate risk and effect.

02:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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