00:00Storm chaser Aaron Rigsby joins us as well. Aaron has had a tremendously interesting weekend here.
00:05He's joining us from Taylorsville, Mississippi. Aaron, yesterday you captured footage of a
00:1040-acre wildfire ahead of some nasty storms, and here you are in Mississippi
00:15on the backside of what has been a large tornado. So what have you experienced today?
00:21Yeah, Jeff, I tell you, it's been a very interesting 48 hours to say the least from
00:25that wildfire due to relatively low humidity, which is very interesting being ahead of a severe
00:31weather outbreak, especially to the one of how substantial it was that occurred overnight and
00:36then immediately had to get to Mississippi ahead of the same storm system, but a more potent side
00:42of it in Mississippi and Alabama. And as you can see behind me with these blown-in doors and snap
00:47trees, this has been the result of one of those many tornadoes that have occurred today across
00:51the southeast. Now I will say from a chasing perspective, today actually did not unfold how I
00:57thought it was going to. A lot of these tornadoes and storms actually fired way further south than
01:02I was anticipating and actually outside of some of the highest risk areas that we thought some
01:06of those storms were going to be today. And unfortunately, they did come with some results
01:11of damage and fatalities across the state of Mississippi today. So it's been a very busy start
01:16to 2025 and a very busy last 48 hours here. Aaron, well you've you've seen it all here over the past
01:23few days. What kind of damage have you seen in Taylorsville? I know we can't issue storm survey
01:30information until the Weather Service does their official thing. I'm looking at some of the footage
01:34from your videography, roofs removed off of buildings. Some of the forest damage that I've
01:40noticed has also been pretty striking here in some cases where just the trunks of trees are standing.
01:45What kind of damage do you think we've seen with this in Taylorsville?
01:50Yeah, you know, like you said, we got to wait for the damage surveyors to come out here to
01:53officially confirm those EF ratings. But storm chasing, as long as I have and seeing, you know,
01:57the amount of damage paths that I've seen, I would go that anywhere around here is probably
02:01likely on the high end side of an EF1, maybe a low-end EF2 tornado. This actually behind me
02:07isn't even the worst damage. A little bit, it got actually a little bit worse about two miles east
02:12of the town here. And outside of the, you know, satellite internet that we have there,
02:17communications have been cut off here as well. But this is just one of the many paths that
02:20occurred today. And actually a little bit further south along the Louisiana border,
02:25there was some higher-end damage there and likely going to be an EF3 plus type tornado
02:30once those damage surveys, you know, once they can get underway and release those official results.
02:34So we've seen numerous strong tornadoes today, especially across Mississippi and even a couple
02:39of cells up into Alabama near the Tuscaloosa area that did bring damage with those as well.
02:43So this has been a very widespread event. Really since last night, almost nonstop into the overnight
02:49hours and into early this morning, there was confirmed tornadoes as early as nine o'clock
02:53in the morning, which is very rare, especially on a big severe weather day like this one.
02:58All right. Well, we appreciate your insight as always. Storm chaser Aaron Rigsby,
03:02congrats again on the recent award from a month or so ago for last year.
03:06Aaron Rigsby, good stuff. I met Aaron about 12, 13 years ago in Toledo
03:11when he was a young chaser and he's done some amazing things.
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