Severe weather threat in the central US

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach was live from Salina, Kansas, on the AccuWeather Network on Oct. 30 to talk about the potential for severe weather in the region.

Transcript

00:00Yep, and where there's severe weather, there's a Tony Laubag who is live from Salina, Kansas.

00:07Tony, you were sending us in videos already starting to feel the atmosphere charged up.

00:13And of course, I hear the wind blowing that southerly flow. Right, Tony?

00:21Yeah, and you know, that's one of the key ingredients it's going to make today. I think

00:25very volatile for a lot of folks across the eastern half of Kansas. You're hearing it here

00:29and I'm standing in the wind and you talk about southerly flow, you talk about low-level shear,

00:34and you want that out of the southeast. This wind is blowing out of the south-southeast,

00:38so we've got the low-level shear in place already. A couple of the questions are going to be storm

00:44mode, how many storms we're going to see, how quickly they form into a line. That I think is

00:49going to make or break whether or not we see a significant number of tornadoes out of today's

00:53setup, but certainly damaging winds and large hail are going to be a big concern. We'll show you

00:58that severe weather map and we'll talk about exactly where that threat area is. You see kind

01:02of a widespread threat almost from the southern Iowa all the way down into Oklahoma, even into

01:08north Texas, but we've got that area highlighted pretty much in that eastern Kansas range and it's

01:13basically right along, the starting point is right along the interstate I-135. That is the

01:19interstate that goes north out of Wichita and connects up to I-70 where I am currently at,

01:24the junction here in Salina, Kansas, the junction of I-135 and I-70 and then points east. We're

01:30looking at two areas, there are two areas I'm focusing on. One of the areas is going to be kind

01:34of along and north of I-70 for early afternoon storms. We could be talking about as early as

01:39lunchtime. Those I think are going to produce more of a damaging wind and hail threat and then we're

01:44going to be starting to look as we get closer to sunset the area south of I-70. This is going to

01:49include cities like here in Salina, McPherson, Newton and that includes folks in Wichita as well.

01:56The good news with the folks in Wichita, you're going to be right on that edge where that front

02:00is going to be depending on initiation. We could hope that that front sweeps through before it

02:05produces those storms but I do think Wichita, Kansas is going to be one of the bigger cities.

02:09It's going to be and probably the more significant threat for those tornadoes. I think we see a little

02:15bit more isolation in those storms. Not necessarily discrete supercells per se and we will see quite

02:21a few storms but they'll have a little more space to them as opposed to what we'll see further north.

02:27That is going to be a pretty small window though I think as those storms push east toward areas like

02:31El Dorado, Independence, Kansas and then eventually down into northern Oklahoma. You're going to start

02:36to see those cells merge and become a line of storms which will then continue to move off to

02:40the east through the overnight hours with that damaging wind and large hail threat. I am

02:44positioned here in Salina, Kansas. It's very rare to wake up in an area where you're probably going

02:49to stay so biggest challenge for me in the early part of the day is going to be staying put. It's

02:54very easy to kind of overanalyze things when you're in an area and you don't really have to

02:58move very much. I think I'm going to take that early couple of storms here maybe two between two

03:03and four o'clock see what develops here in this vicinity and then work my way down to the south

03:08and get myself ahead of the storms which I think are going to be the bigger shows later on this

03:13afternoon into the early evening hours. Again probably within the hour before sunset and then

03:17about two or so hours after that so between six and nine central I think is the best tornado window

03:22down here. Yeah no doubt about that Tony. It's going to be a busy day. Hey this is one of the

03:27first fronts that's actually had gulf moisture in the southern plains all month but you know the

03:32price for the rain is the severe weather. Yeah thank you so much Tony. You are there. Stay safe.

03:37We'll check back in with you.

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Transcript

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