Severe storms fire up in West Texas

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from chasing storms in Texas for the second day in a row on April 29, watching for funnel clouds.

Transcript

00:00We're joined live now by AccuWeather Meteor Storm Chaser Tony Laubeck. He's on the move right now in

00:05Baylor County there in West Texas, Northwest Texas, approaching Seymour. Tony, what are you seeing

00:11there on your drive? Well, we just had an interesting sight here. As you can kind of see

00:18in front of us here, we've got kind of a benign looking sky, just kind of some showers developing

00:22along a boundary that's sitting across this area. But we turned on to US 77 near Mankey. We started

00:29to head down to the south and west, happened to look in the rearview mirror, and this was the view

00:33we had right over the highway here. Check this out. This was a pretty long-lasting funnel, actually

00:38lasted several minutes, very long, snaky funnel. We were kind of at the base of a hill, so we couldn't

00:43really confirm if this thing was on the ground or not. But this was a sight that kind of surprised

00:48both Doug and I as we were making our way down to the south and east, working our way down to where

00:52more stronger storms are starting to develop, and then just kind of had this funnel kind of appear

00:57out of a benign shower. A lot of times what happens, this reminds me a lot of the color

01:01kind of land spout-type storms, where you get these boundaries and these showers that kind of form on

01:06the boundaries, and that updraft that is generating that new shower sometimes will bring rotation up

01:12from the surface, and occasionally you get funnels and occasionally weak land spout tornadoes. Again,

01:17we couldn't confirm any ground circulation with this particular funnel, although it was stretching

01:22pretty good, mainly a horizontal funnel kind of across the sky. But if we bring it back live,

01:28again, you know, these are the kind of the clouds we're looking at here, and you see the cumulus

01:31that are kind of bubbling, and when you get those cumulus that kind of really start to degenerate

01:35upwards and develop into those showers and eventually those thunderstorms, sometimes you get those

01:40pull, you know, pulls that air up from the surface, and if it's got some rotation with it,

01:44every now and again you get sites like that. So we'll call that one a shear funnel.

01:47Fortunately, again, did not touch down. It was kind of in open areas here, but we were stopped

01:53to kind of observe that. Obviously, that was certainly something to see there, especially if

01:57you were just driving on 277 and happened to come over the hill and see that sitting above the road.

02:01Certainly might have been cause for concern for a few of the motorists here, but we're going to

02:04continue to work our way to the southeast toward the Seymour area and points beyond as we get set up

02:09for what is likely to be another active evening for storms here in the northwest Texas area.

02:15All right, Accuather meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Lovac, thanks so much for that update.

02:20We'll go ahead and check with you here coming up, but yes, across west Texas, we already have a

02:24few pretty strong thunderstorms now popping up, including two severe thunderstorm warnings here,

02:29one just right over Lubbock. Lubbock right now is getting hit with some pretty good hailstones

02:34pushing its way across the area, but I do want to freeze frame the radar because the main storm we're

02:38going to be watching out for is going to be this storm moving across Garza County there in pretty much west

02:44Texas there in the Texas panhandle. Going to take a closer look here at this overall area. You can see

02:49that here for post right there in central parts of Garza County, heads up for that because over the

02:54past couple of radar scans, you can see that as far as the overall rotation signature for this

02:58particular storm, it is showing signs of intensifying.