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Hail pours down as severe storms fire up across Kansas
AccuWeather
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10/22/2024
AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Kansas on the afternoon of Oct. 21 as fall thunderstorms swept across the region, dumping intense hail.
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00:00
The threat for severe weather continues here for a portion of the Plains throughout this afternoon, this evening, and into tonight.
00:05
And one man who's often on this is meteorologist Tony Laubach.
00:10
He doesn't miss when it comes to severe weather, and I know that he's been on the prowl there.
00:14
We haven't had a whole lot of severe weather in the Plains.
00:16
He's been on tropical patrol lately, but, Damian, today, a little different.
00:19
He's returned to Kansas.
00:21
That's right, and as we take a closer look at the radar, you can see why,
00:24
because we're starting to see a couple of these thunderstorms really getting going.
00:28
We've had two storms that have persistently produced severe thunderstorm warnings.
00:32
So, right now, we're joined by AccuWeather meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach.
00:36
He joins us right now from Phillips County up in Kansas.
00:38
So, Tony, so far, give me a report on what you're seeing out there.
00:44
Well, things have gotten busy since the last time we spoke, Damian.
00:47
We were talking earlier, about an hour and a half ago, how these storms were really just starting to get going.
00:52
Well, that has happened.
00:53
The storms that are got going have got going, and then some behind me over my shoulder here.
00:58
This is the northern end of a line of storms in north central Kansas
01:02
that I've been tracking for the better part of the last hour.
01:05
What has that produced?
01:07
Well, just a little bit of ice, and we'll show you some of that.
01:09
This in Phillipsburg, this is about 15 or so minutes off to my west where I'm standing currently right now.
01:15
This was some pretty decent amounts of hail.
01:17
Most of it was pretty small.
01:19
We did get hail, excuse me, up to one inch in diameter,
01:22
but it was coming down in a frenzy.
01:24
A lot of hail was covering the ground, made for some hazardous travel.
01:28
A few folks were kind of fishtailing a little bit on the road
01:31
as some of that hail was starting to cover the roadways there.
01:33
In town, it was mainly the western side of town.
01:36
Once you got on the east side of town, it was all rain,
01:38
so most of the heavier core stayed off to the west of this.
01:42
Again, about one inch hail is what we got out of that.
01:45
So, again, technically, what makes a severe thunderstorm severe,
01:48
one of those criteria, is one-inch hail,
01:50
and that's exactly what we saw there in the town of Phillipsburg.
01:54
We're going to show you the radar here because we want to show you
01:56
that we've got kind of a cluster and a line of storms that are forming in this area.
02:00
This is one of several bands that we're seeing develop ahead of this low-pressure system
02:04
that's slowly working its way along the Kansas-Nebraska border.
02:07
We do have that threat, maybe for a brief tornado,
02:10
but I think really the big issue is going to be the large damaging hail.
02:14
We do have a severe thunderstorm watch in effect for this area until 11 o'clock tonight.
02:19
We'll bring you back live here because I've switched camera directions.
02:21
You were looking off to the north behind me.
02:23
Now we're looking back off to the southwest,
02:25
and you kind of see there, Damien, that little lowering.
02:27
That's kind of a developing wall cloud.
02:29
Again, we're seeing kind of clusters in this.
02:31
The issue, I think, with this in terms of the tornadic threat at the moment where I'm standing,
02:35
temperatures are right around 50 degrees.
02:38
It is very, very cold.
02:39
When you get a lot of that precipitation, it pulls that cold air down to the surface
02:44
and kind of blows it out here.
02:45
So despite that wall cloud there, I think the tornado chances are going to be pretty low,
02:49
but unfortunately, this is going to be a repeat for folks in the Phillipsburg area.
02:53
We're going to see these storms continue to fill in.
02:55
Again, that watch goes until 11 o'clock tonight,
02:57
and you see the rain coming down right now around me.
02:59
Might start seeing some pea-sized hail here in this vicinity before too long.
03:03
We're going to be tracking these storms for the rest of the evening.
03:06
All right, Tony, thank you so much.
03:07
50-degree air is very heavy, and it's very hard to lift.
03:10
So that definitely will possibly choke off some of these storms.
03:13
So this is what we're going to be tracking here.
03:15
So taking a closer look, one of the things I always like to look at
03:17
is you look at the lightning intensity of these storms.
03:20
If a storm is maintaining or increasing its lightning production,
03:23
that means that it's maintaining as a healthy or a maturing storm.
03:26
So that storm that Tony was talking about over Phillipsburg,
03:29
it's still definitely producing a lot of lightning.
03:31
So this one is possibly going to be the storm
03:33
because the one to the west of it and the one to the southeast of it,
03:37
that's looking like to me it's showing signs of the overall lightning
03:41
starting to subside and depress just a little bit.
03:43
So it does look like it's primarily going to be this storm here in Phillipsburg
03:47
that is going to be the one that is going to produce the most damage,
03:49
especially as far as some large hail.
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