AccuWeather's Tony Laubach celebrates 29th year of storm chasing

AccuWeather

With the latest round of severe weather brewing in the United States, storm chaser Tony Laubach reflects on his decades of storm chasing and the tornado that first ignited his passion.

Transcript

00:00With the severe weather threat in the coming days, that means AccuWeather's own meteorologist

00:04Tony Laubach is on the road, prepared to track the storms.

00:08Tony is a veteran storm chaser.

00:09I emphasis, veteran.

00:11He must have written that script.

00:13Yeah, he's been around.

00:14What else do you want us to say about you, Tony?

00:16And a lot of experience now.

00:19Now the question is, you're on the road.

00:22A lot of different locations tomorrow.

00:25Where are you headed to?

00:29Well, Bernie, we're still kind of working out the details on that.

00:33Obviously, the parameters tomorrow are pretty insane.

00:36There's a lot of areas that we're going to be looking at covering.

00:39We're going to talk more about that later this afternoon as we get some of the morning

00:43model runs in and kind of really finalize things.

00:46We're going to head to Little Rock.

00:47It's kind of where our basis is here as I'm kicking off, as I mentioned, my 29th storm

00:53chasing season.

00:54I have been in this for almost three decades now.

00:56A lot has changed since then.

00:58I had more hair up here than I did here back in the day.

01:01You want proof?

01:02Check some of these early clips out shot by various friends of mine, including my wife,

01:06who is 20 years plus strong with me here.

01:10She's been out with me a few times and was responsible behind the camera for a lot of

01:14these clips.

01:15It has certainly been one of these long-time things where when you got into this, you were

01:19wondering, am I really going to do this for this long?

01:22It's been hard to believe that for almost 30 years, I have been running around the United

01:26States chasing after clouds and doing it for a living.

01:30I'm one of the Twister era chasers, if you will, more by convenience than anything else.

01:36Ironically enough, here in Wichita, where I'm at currently, was birthed to the tornado

01:40that really spurred my interest in storm chasing back in 1991, the Andover, Kansas tornado.

01:46Part of that high-risk outbreak that we saw back then, the videos from McConnell Air Force

01:50Base were one of those that just absolutely floored me.

01:53The year after that, there was a special that was aired that introduced me to the concept

01:58of storm chasing.

01:59In 1992, when I was 11 years old, I said, Dad, Mom, I want to do that for a living.

02:05They chuckled.

02:06About six years later, my dad took me on my first chase in Ohio.

02:09We saw our first tornado together, and ever since, that has been where it is.

02:13That started in 1997, and that leads you all the way here to 2025 as I get started on year

02:19number 29 in the chasing realm.

02:22I've seen a lot.

02:23It's been a lot of big changes.

02:24We talk about just everything that's developed in that time.

02:28When I started out, it was paper maps and a weather radio in the car.

02:32Now we are essentially using our phones to get data at our fingertips.

02:36Just so much has changed over the course of the years.

02:38I've been through six different vehicles.

02:40Obviously, I've spent time with Twistex.

02:42See my chase partner, Ed Grubb, behind me.

02:45He and I are going on year 19 together, as we started chasing together back in 2007.

02:49It looks like we're going to start off with a bang this year.

02:52Tony, who's cutting the onions?

02:54That was such a beautiful, emotional story to hear how you got into all of this.

03:01You're one of the best there.

03:0229 years.

03:03That's a lot of experience, and cool to see how things have unfolded.

03:06By the way, Tony, hair is so overrated.

03:09So overrated.

03:10What do you mean?

03:11Yeah.

03:12Agreed.

03:13Agreed.

03:14Hey, be safe.

03:15It's going to be a busy next couple of days.

03:18Yeah, absolutely.

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