Torrential rain leads to flooding amid severe storms in Texas

AccuWeather

With multiple rounds of storms in the forecast on May 5, heavy rain led to major street flooding in places like Odessa.

Transcript

00:00Our live coverage begins this hour once again with Tony Laubach. He joins us live from near

00:04Andrews in Texas. And Tony, earlier you were in Midland and Odessa, so you've traveled a little

00:08bit to the north. Give us an update on what you're seeing. All right, well, we're kind of splitting

00:15right now between two different severe cells. We talked about that one last hour that was moving

00:20through the Odessa area. That one bringing some pretty good rains to the city. We're tracking

00:25another one off to the northwest, but we'll start you off with scenes out of Odessa. This storm was

00:29not in the neighborhood for very long, but it was dropping copious amounts of rain. One thing I did

00:34notice and immediately coming in behind this storm wasn't much, if any, hail on the ground. So a lot

00:40of the radar echoes likely just coming from the torrential downpours that were able to flood

00:45streets in just minutes. So it gives you an idea of how heavy the rain was in that storm. You see

00:49some of the sites of vehicles driving through some of this water. It was moving pretty good. A lot of

00:53it just flowing down the streets in some areas. So a lot of the streets, especially on the north side

00:58of Odessa, certainly looking a little bit more like rivers than they were streets. We'll go ahead

01:04and take you off the radar here because we're kind of going to give you a show you what we're looking

01:08at. Obviously, we're talking about the storm right now that is over the Odessa area. That continues

01:12to be severe worn. But if you look off to the north and west here, just to the west of Andrews,

01:16where I'm at, that is another cell that we're tracking. Both of these right now, I would say,

01:21are minimal tornado threats. I think both of these we talked about last hour on the north side

01:26of that outflow boundary, which is finally just starting to stall there south of the interstate,

01:30south of Midland, Odessa. So these storms likely going to be hailers for sure. The one to the

01:36northwest is the one I'm currently tracking here. And if you bring me back live, I've switched the

01:40view over my shoulder and you can kind of see the edge of that updraft from that storm. That one's

01:45got a pretty hefty core out of the two storms in the area. That's certainly the one I think that's

01:50the most severe looking, certainly worn for bigger hail. We do have one and a half inch hail on the last

01:55warning I read just a few minutes ago. Would not shock me if we see bigger hail or just a lot, just

02:01like accumulating hail. We can sometimes get that here on the high plains where the storms might be

02:06warned for big, large hail. And then you get up under them and it's just a lot of small hail, but it's

02:11piled up six, seven inches deep. So that's going to be one thing I'm going to be watching here with this

02:16storm in the near term. We are under a tornado watch until nine o'clock here. That goes from southeast New

02:21Mexico down in through the Midland Odessa area. So conditions do still warrant the potential for

02:26tornadoes. And I do think we will see an uptick in that. This is only going to be the first round

02:31of storms that we're going to be tracking here tonight. Damon expecting more supercell development

02:35probably in the next couple of hours. That's going to bring the second round. And again, those storms

02:40certainly could be tornadic as well. Right now, damaging winds and very large hail are going to be the

02:44primary threats. These storms will linger into the overnight hours and become part of the mess that we're

02:49expecting on the other side of the state tomorrow. All right, Tony, real quick, give me an update on what

02:54you're seeing as far as the inbound winds to that storm just to the west of Andrews. What is the humidity and

02:58what's the temperature like for those winds? Well, you know, you hear the wind, it's blowing in my face right now

03:06and it is being pulled into that storm. I would say we're probably gusting 30 to 40 at times and some of the

03:11higher gusts, but it's cool here at the surface, a little bit cooler than than you would normally see with a

03:18tornadic storm. So I think these storms, Damien, are just slightly elevated, which is why I'm more

03:22concerned with hail in the near term. We'll see how the tornado threat evolves later this evening.

03:27All right, Tony Lallbach reporting for us from Andrews County in West Texas. Thank you so much

03:31for that update. We'll continue to check in with you here coming up. Let's go and show you the broad

03:36view here on radar of what Tony was talking about. So Tony is in Andrews right there, which is in the

03:40middle of your screen. He was primarily, the storm behind him was that storm there up to the north and up to the

03:46west. So he was looking at this storm over his shoulder, but we now have a brand new severe

03:51thunderstorm warning for this storm that's north of Midland. So we will be watching out for multiple

03:55severe thunderstorm warning storms here as we go forward. But overall, one thing I want to point

03:59out is that for this storm moving between Martin and Midland County right there, that one was just

04:04reissued. But yes, the storm that Tony was talking about has more of a hail core associated with this.

04:10So that one's going to be one that's going to be producing some pretty good size hail.

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