AccuWeather's Tony Laubach is tracking down a supercell storm brewing over Lakeview, Texas, on the evening of June 8. Hail is in the forecast with an additional tornado issued for this storm.
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00:00Thanks for being with us here on the AccuWeather Network. I'm Jeff Cornish.
00:02And I'm Damian Lotus, and we're continuing to cover the weekend storms that unfortunately left one person dead
00:07and thousands without power across the southeast.
00:10Now we're looking forward to what we're tracking as we head into this evening.
00:13And Tony Laubach has been putting on a lot of miles lately.
00:16He's going to join us live now from Lakeview, Texas, just south of Clarendon.
00:20So, Tony, what do you have there?
00:24Well, we are tracking a supercell.
00:26We've been talking all day about the damaging wind, kind of the cluster of storms with the wind threat.
00:31But right now we're kind of in discrete supercell mode.
00:34And this is about as textbook of a supercell, probably kind of a mix of a classic slash HP as you can get.
00:41And the lightning out of this has just been phenomenal, probably for the better part of the last 30 minutes.
00:47You're going to see the flashes off and on here.
00:48So we are in the town of Lakeview.
00:51We're just outside of Lakeview, so south of Clarendon to the west of Memphis, Texas.
00:55And we've been tracking the storm as it has been pushing southeast.
00:59This storm has carried a tornado warning on it for a while.
01:01Right now it is just a severe thunderstorm.
01:04But I say that very lightly as this is a severe thunderstorm with potential for 4-inch diameter hail.
01:10We have seen hail reports exceeding 3.5 inches.
01:15And we know that there's actually a hail research mission out here as well.
01:18They've reported 4.25 inches of hail with this particular supercell.
01:22And you can just see the structure of this thing.
01:24Very evident that this is a very, very powerful storm.
01:28Fortunately, right now it's largely, the brunt of this is largely kind of out in the middle of nowhere here.
01:34Not a lot of towns in this particular area.
01:36So that is some good news for the most part.
01:38So right now the storm is remaining generally over fairly open areas.
01:42Unfortunately, though, I would say Childress, Texas, which is a fairly sizable town.
01:47If you're paying attention to us from there, you're probably going to want to start thinking about finding a place to put your car.
01:53And certainly if this thing goes tornadic, certainly have a place to be in case this thing does produce a tornado.
01:59But right now this is remaining generally south of 287.
02:02But I think once it arrives kind of close to Memphis, Memphis and then south and east toward Childress is going to be kind of the area on 287.
02:10I've been talking about a very busy, busy stretch of road for truckers.
02:14And certainly this is not something you want to get caught in.
02:17Again, you're just you're watching the incredible lightning out of this.
02:20Not only are we seeing the lightning in front of us, but there is lightning kind of around me, behind me, coming out of the anvil.
02:26So even ahead of this storm, and this would include areas like Memphis or Childress for that matter, just because you're not in the storm, this lightning is striking well out ahead of this particular thunderstorm.
02:40So I know we kind of get the highlights of the giant hail and the tornado potential, but lightning certainly can be very, very deadly.
02:46And particularly if you're kind of going outside right now, you're 20, 30 miles away, as the storm kind of approaches, you're going to see some of that intense lightning kind of working into your vicinity.
02:56So that's going to be a hazard that's probably going to arrive well before any other part of the storm does.
03:01But again, right now, I would say the worst of the hail core right now is just about to hit near the junction of Texas Highway 256 and Texas Highway 70.
03:09Again, that would be south of Clarendon, north of Turkey, Texas, working in the direction of Lakeview and Memphis.
03:17That is going to be an issue.
03:18And then the storm eventually will catch up with 287 as it works its way toward the Childress area.
03:24So if you're in any of those locations, certainly be prepared at the very least for extremely large damaging hail.
03:30And like I mentioned, the lightning threat, which is something that kind of gets under-talked about in these severe weather events.
03:35But that is certainly one of the highlights to this storm right now, guys.
03:38So tracking a very powerful storm, we're waiting for everything to kind of organize into that big damaging wind threat.
03:44I still think we're an hour or two away before we start to see the clustering.
03:48So the giant hail and tornado threat, I think, is going to be the main headliner right now for the next couple hours
03:53until we get that transition over to that damaging wind threat.
03:56All right, storm chaser and meteorologist Tony Laubach, thank you so much for that report.
04:01We're going to check in with you because that's possibly going to be the storm of the day.