A tornado was captured by AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reporting from Morton, Texas, after a tornado warning was issued for the area.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Tony, we're looking at your view right now.
00:02Yeah, Jeff, we've been tracking this tornado here.
00:06Yeah, Damian, we've been tracking this very large supercell here with a parent wedge tornado.
00:12It's kind of buried in the rain here.
00:14Service is a little bad.
00:15There are a lot of people out here tracking storms here.
00:17So hopefully the audio stays with me.
00:19But we had a very big visual on a tornado just to the west of Morton about, I'd say, 45 minutes ago.
00:25And I've had periodic glimpses in there and continue to see what looked to be a large wedge on the ground.
00:31My last look into the storm before I had to dive south to get out of the way of the hook made it very difficult to tell if there was anything still on the ground or not.
00:39Radar indications that there's definitely still a very tight circulation in there.
00:43But if you look at the radar, it is kind of an HP.
00:46There's a lot of precipitation wrapping and a lot of dust.
00:49It's really made it very, very difficult to see.
00:51Folks in Lubbock, look, benefit of the doubt here.
00:54Let's assume there's a tornado on the ground here, all right?
00:57You've got about an hour prep time here, particularly on the northern half of town.
01:01If you're in Lubbock, Texas right now, you've got a significant supercell with a history of producing a very large tornado.
01:08This was open country for the most part.
01:10Don't know of any farms or any isolated areas that may have been hit by this.
01:13But it seemed to miss most population centers.
01:15But I can verify that the tornado that I saw was indeed one of the stronger varieties of certainly a wide tornado before it got enveloped in the dust.
01:24This may be one that if the storm continues in its character as it is, may be very, very difficult, if not impossible to see when it is coming.
01:33Again, I'm south of the hook right now by about two miles.
01:36I had to race to get out in front of it here as it's kind of dropped south a little bit here.
01:39I have zero visibility into the base of this storm, typically where I'm at here just on the southeast side of the hook.
01:47Typically, I can look back to the northwest and get a good view in there.
01:50It is enveloped in precipitation and dust.
01:52There is no visual on whether or not there's a tornado in there.
01:55This heading toward the Lubbock area, you want to assume as long as the tornado warnings continue,
02:02especially when one gets issued for you here not too long from now,
02:05that you want to assume that there is probably a tornado with this.
02:08And you want to make sure you're taking your tornado precautions here.
02:10You're hearing this on the AccuWeather Network, folks.
02:12We're giving you advance notice.
02:14A tornadic supercell is making its way toward the Lubbock area here.
02:18I'd say within 30 to 45 minutes, you're going to start getting that knocking on the door here.
02:23So this is some advance notice that you have a significant issue coming.
02:27This is also going to include areas for shallow water, New Deal, those areas as well.
02:33So a lot of folks are soon to be in the path of this storm, which, again, has produced multiple tornadoes,
02:38including one at least long-lived significant tornado, Damien.
02:42All right, Storm Chaser Tony Lovach, thank you so much for that update.
02:45And Tony, give us an update real quick.
02:47So you said you're two miles south of the Hooks.
02:49You're right there where the inflow winds need to be to help support this long-track-developing tornado.
02:53Give me an update on what those winds are like there that are being pulled into the storm.
02:56So the road that I'm on here, I'm about three miles north of Highway 114 near Opdyke West.
03:07So I'm north of Opdyke West right now.
03:09I'm in pretty calm winds where I'm at here.
03:11Most of the inflow winds I drove south through were pumping pretty good.
03:16I would say 60 miles an hour.
03:18Once I got south of kind of that inflow jet, things have calmed down.
03:22There's still about 10-mile-an-hour winds blowing across, but certainly nothing as bad as I was seeing
03:27as I was making my way south through the Hook to get down to this east-west road.
03:31Tony, how long ago did you capture some of the footage that we're showing right now
03:34with the dust wrapping up into the funnel?
03:39This was about 45 minutes ago, Jeff.
03:41This was when the storm hadn't really wrapped up the precipitation and the dust.
03:45And then, again, probably, I'd say, 30 minutes later, I got a view of a large wedge still underneath there.
03:50But, again, hard to tell whether that's still ongoing or not.
03:53But it's certainly something of concern for the folks at Lubbock here in the next hour.