Violent storms lead to a major hail threat in the southern Plains

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Benjamin, Texas, as multiple severe storms swept through the region.

Transcript

00:00More severe weather is expected throughout the rest of the week here across parts of Texas,

00:04and then this will also include Arkansas, Louisiana. Flooding concerns will also be on

00:09the rise, especially, as you can imagine, near that swollen Mississippi River.

00:13All right, well, we want to get down into our live coverage this hour with Tony Lawback,

00:16joining us now from near Benjamin, Texas. Tony, how's it going down there? You've had a heck of

00:22a spring. Yeah, it's been a heck of a spring for sure, and I'll tell you, it's continuing now.

00:28Folks in Benjamin just got absolutely throttled. We saw probably, hard to say, I would say at least

00:34two-inch diameter hail, if not bigger. I think some of the bigger stones were probably just north

00:37of town. This was the same cell responsible for a five-inch diameter hail. One of our chasers

00:43reporting their back windshield getting actually just put a hole, like the stone went straight

00:48through, put a hole in their windshield. So some very violent storms here, primarily hailers. You've

00:53noticed the lack of tornado warnings that we've seen kind of on these cells, just due to the cold

00:58air, the cooler air that has remained on the surface, which has really prevented tornadic

01:02circulation from becoming a big issue. But it has been the hail, the wind-driven hail, which continues

01:07to be an issue. Again, folks here in Benjamin just got done with round one. Fortunately, there's a

01:12second round coming in from the southwest. So unfortunately, what we're seeing now is probably

01:17going to linger just a little bit longer here in the city. I saw a lot of folks slowly making their

01:21way into town from the west, likely having a very rough time of it as they were working their way,

01:26trying to get here into Benjamin. A lot of folks using the gas station for cover, but unfortunately,

01:31the wind-driven hail coming in sideways, very hard to really get shelter from stuff like that.

01:36We're in a safe spot here. We've managed to find ourselves in an area of coverage that's about

01:41three sides covered plus the top. So we were able to ride this out pretty effectively. But again,

01:47we probably had wind-driven hail, maybe up to baseball size. We'll get out here once it's safe to do so and

01:53see if we can't find some of the bigger stones and get an accurate measurement and get that report

01:57into you guys as well as the National Weather Service just to let folks know what this storm

02:00has. Again, I think the worst of the hail, probably not by much, maybe a mile or two just to the north

02:05of Benjamin there along. I would put that as Highway 6, State Highway 6, just on the north side of

02:12Benjamin. Again, if you're looking at radar, you see there are basically three storms we're watching.

02:17The one that's here in Benjamin, then you go southwest just to the north of Knox City,

02:20and they just pumped a tornado warning on for this one. Of course they did.

02:24So we do have the first tornado warning of the day on this particular cell. Again,

02:28that's just gone through the Benjamin area. So our hope is that we can go ahead and get ourselves

02:33east, get ourselves back out in front of this storm, and we'll be able to continue to track this storm

02:38as it continues to push off to the east northeast. So again, folks along Highway 82, this is going to be

02:44kind of, I would assume, north of Seymour. But if you're in Seymour, Texas, certainly be prepared for this one.

02:50Unfortunately, again, you've got the other two cells that are down the line that are going to

02:54also be of issue for you as well. So just because you're not in it yet, again, this tornado warning,

03:00the polygon extends to about Seymour. You guys in Seymour are next in the list here,

03:05so you're going to definitely want to be paying attention.

03:08That's right. We're going to be watching out for this new tornado warning storm there, Tony.

03:11It's going to be going from Knox County into Baylor County, so we'll be watching out for that.

03:16Tony, you gave us an update on how large the hailstones. You've been talking about possible

03:21baseball-sized hailstones with the storm that you're in in particular. What about the quantity

03:28of hailstones? Is it a lot of widespread hail, or is it just some of those little tit-for-tat

03:35kind of sporadic hailstones?

03:38It's a wide range. Like I'm seeing in the grass, there's good coverage, so it was pretty consistent.

03:47It didn't last long here. We're in the hook. We have the hook that came through, so we're in a

03:51much skinnier area as opposed to north of here where they're in the sustained core, the main

03:56brunt. So this was in the hook region. So we basically had about, I'd say, two minutes of pretty

04:01solid hail, but enough to where, again, looking out kind of in the grass out in front of us, Damien,

04:05there's definitely coverage. So I would imagine in the core, just to our north,

04:10is probably pretty intense.

04:12Okay. All right. Tony Laubach, thank you so much for that update. We'll check in with you coming up

04:15because this is now a tornado-worn storm, the first tornado-worn storm here for this particular set

04:20of storms that we've been tracking across parts of the Texas Panhandle into parts of southwest Texas,

04:27or northwest Texas, I should say. Here's a live look now at Tulsa. And yes, this threat of severe

04:31weather here across the southern plains is extending from pretty much, yeah, northeast Oklahoma

04:36and the Tulsa metro all the way down through west Texas. But yeah, we're going to key in here on the

04:40Benjamin area, which is where Tony Laubach is. This is where he was tracking those baseball-sized

04:45hailstones moving in. This is definitely going to be a hail producer, but with as many chasers on this

04:51particular storm as we have, I guess they have a little bit more of an inkling there as far as maybe

04:56somebody saw something to warrant this tornado warning. But as we look at the overall rotation

05:01signature here from Lubbock, let's go and take a look at the Velocity product. And yeah, you can

05:05see that this is a more of a muddied rotation signature compared to what we've been tracking

05:10earlier. But once again, Tony kind of hit the nail on the head here earlier for us whenever he said

05:14that this is just one of multiple storms that we are tracking here across this region. So yes,

05:20you have the tornado-worn storm with the baseball-sized hail that just worked its way across

05:24Benjamin. But we also have this storm that's going to be just to the west of Knox City,

05:28and we have this storm that's going to be just to the north of Aspermont right there. So we have

05:32three distinct separate severe thunderstorms capable of producing baseball-sized hail, and in some cases

05:39even possible producing a tornado warning here as we go forward. So we're going to be watching out for

05:44multiple areas with low to mid-level rotation. It's going to be that mid-level rotation we're primarily

05:49tracking here for the highest potential of producing that devastating, dangerous, and in

05:54this case destructive for the severe thunderstorm warning, destructive hail here looking forward.

05:59Because overall these are going to be some very strong and some very potent storms.

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