Shelf cloud rolls through Mississippi as another day of severe storms hits the South

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Mississippi on April 3 as severe storms roared across the Midwest and South for a second day in a row.

Transcript

00:00We want to get right into tonight's severe weather

00:02threat with meteorologist, storm chaser Tony Laubach

00:04live in Sardis, Mississippi.

00:06Tony, what are you seeing?

00:10Well, Jeff, we're just now getting

00:13under this beautiful shelf cloud.

00:15You can kind of see over my head some of the low-level clouds

00:18and obviously the wind that's blowing really good right now.

00:20This, if you're on I-55 between just out

00:24from Sardis and points north, you're

00:26seeing an amazing shelf cloud.

00:28We have video of that.

00:29We'll send that over here momentarily.

00:31This right now is on the north side of the front

00:33that we're really kind of watching.

00:35This shelf cloud, it really cooled air.

00:37In fact, I could be wearing a jacket right now

00:39and be much more comfortable.

00:40But we're seeing winds gusting about 30,

00:42maybe approaching 40 miles per hour

00:44with some of these heavier gusts as this thing

00:46rolls over toward I-55.

00:48Literally, probably the leading edge

00:50of this wind shift of this line of storms,

00:52this would be south of Memphis, is pushing off

00:55to the east pretty quickly, probably about 50 to 55

00:57miles per hour.

00:58Again, it was a very dramatic sight

01:00as it rolled across the highway here with that wind shift.

01:04In fact, we're going to go ahead and pick this up and move this

01:07because I want to get a better angle what's

01:09going on down the street here and maybe kind of show you

01:12off in the distance here.

01:13We got this area of lowering that's behind us here.

01:17This area right back in here has been

01:20an area that's been watched by a few of us here.

01:22Occasionally, we see dust kind of kick up underneath that.

01:25And you see it right over the trees starting

01:27to push off to the east.

01:28That's the south end of this line right now.

01:31That is what we're kind of watching.

01:33If we're going to see tornadic development,

01:35that's probably the area that's going to be.

01:37Again, that would be south of Stardust, north of Batesville.

01:41So we're going to go ahead and pack up here

01:43as you see the rain starting to come down,

01:44get back on the south end of this thing,

01:46and go ahead and track this just a little bit here.

01:48Again, right on the front that we're watching here.

01:51So if it stays on the south side in just some of the warm air,

01:55possibly could see something tornadic with that.

01:58If it stays on the cool side,

01:59kind of where we're at right now,

02:01probably going to be a big hail threat for us here.

02:03But again, stay tuned.

02:04We'll have the awesome shelf cloud as it was rolling in.

02:06And we're going to go track that area right back behind us

02:09and see if that might start to get a little frisky

02:11as we get later on in the afternoon.

02:13All right, Tony, we'll look forward to that video.

02:15Meteorologist Tony Laubach, thanks for that update.

02:17All right, Tony brought up a good point.

02:18The big difference between the warm air inbound

02:21and the cold air inbound,

02:22because cold air is a lot heavier

02:24and thunderstorms are kind of lazy.

02:26They don't like to do a lot of work,

02:27so they don't really like lifting heavy air,

02:29which cold air is.

02:30So yeah, if it can stay in that warm zone

02:32that Tony was talking about,

02:34then yes, with the storm being all by itself,

02:36the one that Tony is tracking,

02:37it definitely has a chance to produce a tornado.

02:40So that's what we're going to be watching there for that.

02:42But overall here, he's just to the south of Memphis

02:45where we have that line of thunderstorms moving in.

02:47But in addition to that,

02:48we also have a few other separate severe thunderstorm

02:51warnings and even tornado warnings ongoing.

02:53So we had a tornado warning earlier in West Virginia.

02:56That storm has wrapped up on itself.

02:58So it's been allowed to expire,

02:59but we still have a few isolated tornado warnings here.

03:02One just to the south of Nashville

03:04that we're going to highlight right now here for you.

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Transcript

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