Assessing the tornado threat in Louisiana Friday evening

Extreme Meteorologist Reed Timmer was in Hammond, Louisiana, as rain drenched the region and severe storms rolled through.

Transcript

00:00 We have supercells that are initiating across southeastern Louisiana already.

00:04 A couple severe thunderstorm warnings and they're producing very heavy rain

00:07 and there is a moderate risk for excessive rainfall today, maybe even

00:11 greater than that as we go through the day today. Six, eight inches of rainfall

00:15 possible where those thunderstorms train over the same areas. So certainly flash

00:20 flooding potential is going to be ramping up as we go through the day, but

00:22 the tornado threat is also going to be increasing as we go through the day here

00:26 across southeastern Louisiana. There's a very strong low-level jet in place and

00:31 that's creating strong low-level wind shear that'll cause any sustained

00:34 supercell storms to tighten up in the low levels and produce tornadoes. Some

00:38 conditionally strong too. If tornadoes do happen they will have the potential of

00:43 causing a lot of problems and you can hear that lightning back, hear that

00:46 thunder back behind me, a lot of lightning from these storms as they're

00:49 intensifying and I'm watching for a rain-free base on this storm to see if

00:54 there's already rotation in it and you can already start to see some cloud

00:57 structure as these supercell storms are developing and approaching the Hammond

01:01 area and I expect them to gradually intensify as we go through the day as

01:04 instability begins to increase and then these storms are going to congeal together

01:08 with that embedded tornado potential within the line continuing through the

01:12 overnight hours, but then the threat's really going to shift for dangerous flash

01:16 flooding and there are already a bunch of flash flood warnings up in the

01:19 Jackson area a little bit further north where those storms have trained over the

01:22 same areas on the stable side of the outflow boundary.