00:00With the severe weather threat in the coming days, that means AccuWeather's own meteorologist
00:04Tony Laubach is on the road, prepared to track the storms.
00:08Tony is a veteran storm chaser.
00:09I emphasis, veteran.
00:11He must have written that script.
00:13Yeah, he's been around.
00:14What else do you want us to say about you, Tony?
00:16And a lot of experience now.
00:19Now the question is, you're on the road.
00:22A lot of different locations tomorrow.
00:25Where are you headed to?
00:29Well, Bernie, we're still kind of working out the details on that.
00:33Obviously, the parameters tomorrow are pretty insane.
00:36There's a lot of areas that we're going to be looking at covering.
00:39We're going to talk more about that later this afternoon as we get some of the morning
00:43model runs in and kind of really finalize things.
00:46We're going to head to Little Rock.
00:47It's kind of where our basis is here as I'm kicking off, as I mentioned, my 29th storm
00:53chasing season.
00:54I have been in this for almost three decades now.
00:56A lot has changed since then.
00:58I had more hair up here than I did here back in the day.
01:01You want proof?
01:02Check some of these early clips out shot by various friends of mine, including my wife,
01:06who is 20 years plus strong with me here.
01:10She's been out with me a few times and was responsible behind the camera for a lot of
01:14these clips.
01:15It has certainly been one of these long-time things where when you got into this, you were
01:19wondering, am I really going to do this for this long?
01:22It's been hard to believe that for almost 30 years, I have been running around the United
01:26States chasing after clouds and doing it for a living.
01:30I'm one of the Twister era chasers, if you will, more by convenience than anything else.
01:36Ironically enough, here in Wichita, where I'm at currently, was birthed to the tornado
01:40that really spurred my interest in storm chasing back in 1991, the Andover, Kansas tornado.
01:46Part of that high-risk outbreak that we saw back then, the videos from McConnell Air Force
01:50Base were one of those that just absolutely floored me.
01:53The year after that, there was a special that was aired that introduced me to the concept
01:58of storm chasing.
01:59In 1992, when I was 11 years old, I said, Dad, Mom, I want to do that for a living.
02:05They chuckled.
02:06About six years later, my dad took me on my first chase in Ohio.
02:09We saw our first tornado together, and ever since, that has been where it is.
02:13That started in 1997, and that leads you all the way here to 2025 as I get started on year
02:19number 29 in the chasing realm.
02:22I've seen a lot.
02:23It's been a lot of big changes.
02:24We talk about just everything that's developed in that time.
02:28When I started out, it was paper maps and a weather radio in the car.
02:32Now we are essentially using our phones to get data at our fingertips.
02:36Just so much has changed over the course of the years.
02:38I've been through six different vehicles.
02:40Obviously, I've spent time with Twistex.
02:42See my chase partner, Ed Grubb, behind me.
02:45He and I are going on year 19 together, as we started chasing together back in 2007.
02:49It looks like we're going to start off with a bang this year.
02:52Tony, who's cutting the onions?
02:54That was such a beautiful, emotional story to hear how you got into all of this.
03:01You're one of the best there.
03:0229 years.
03:03That's a lot of experience, and cool to see how things have unfolded.
03:06By the way, Tony, hair is so overrated.
03:09So overrated.
03:10What do you mean?
03:11Yeah.
03:12Agreed.
03:13Agreed.
03:14Hey, be safe.
03:15It's going to be a busy next couple of days.
03:18Yeah, absolutely.
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