Severe weather threat for the Plains and Midwest

AccuWeather

AccuWeather speaks with storm chaser Tony Laubach, who reports on the growing severe weather threat for the Plains and Midwest regions of the United States with concerns for hail and tornadoes.

Transcript

00:00As we take a look at what's going on into the severe weather for this evening and tonight,

00:05we can take a closer look here into meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach as he is out in

00:12parts of northeast Colorado and he's joining us from Brush, Colorado. A long interstate 76 here

00:17kind of pulls northeast through the high plains. Tony's seeing a little bit more

00:20convective development, a little bit of a darker sky behind you compared to an hour ago.

00:25Yeah, Jeff. And the reason behind that is because this darker sky has blocked out the sun,

00:32which means I could actually stand with that in the background because the sun's not washing me

00:37out. So yes, that is one of the storms that we are watching here. You kind of see it off in the

00:40distance here, and I want to point right in that area there. You kind of see the light area over

00:44the hill. That is the base of one of those storms. And to give you an idea, that is a good 20, 30

00:49miles away. These storms right now, very, very high base storms, not going to pose much in the

00:53way of a threat for tornadoes yet, but we are concerned about some hail. Let's show you the

00:58radar here because as you can see, there's not just one storms. We are in what we like to call

01:03a target-rich environment. We've got multiple cells that have fired east and northeast of Denver.

01:08The question is going to be which one of these storms is going to be the one that is going to

01:12attract all of the chasers that are currently sitting here in Brush. And there are a lot of

01:16them as we are all waiting for that one storm to really get its act going here. And we've got a

01:20window that is pretty long tonight. Let's show you because we actually have a very small tornado

01:26watch in effect in northeast Colorado. You notice that severe thunderstorm watch that is right on

01:30top of that too. Really, this is the whole area that we're concerned about for the severe weather.

01:35But that tornado watch, that really small one specifically, is because we have a corridor

01:39that have enhanced potential. That is what we're waiting to see here is which one of these storms

01:44kind of gets into that area. We've got kind of a narrow band of higher surface moisture for these

01:50storms to work with in that tornado watch area. So that is why you see the tornado watch here and

01:54the severe thunderstorm watch up in Wyoming. Not as much moisture, not as much instability up that

01:59way. Those storms up north likely producing a hail and wind threat. The tornado threat is going to

02:04come with the storms. They're going to be basically moving along the I-76 highway 34 corridors from

02:09Brush, Sterling, those areas as you get out toward McCook, Nebraska, maybe even just to the south

02:15of I-80 near North Platte. So we're going to be watching these storms. It's going to be a longer

02:19night tonight, I think, than we typically see out in these parts in terms of the tornado risk, Jeff.

02:23Typically, we see the tornado threat early to mid-afternoon here. Tonight, going to be more of a

02:28traditional Plains timing, likely going to be after seven o'clock when things really ramp up.

02:32All right, Tony. I know you're going to be on top of that. So be safe, stay safe, and we'll look forward

02:36to more reports from you farther east. I know you're going to be eastbound with this severe

02:40weather event on Tuesday.

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