Severe weather hits Midwest, returns midweek

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach is in Missouri, where storms and hail hit on Sunday.

Transcript

00:00Meteorologist Tony Loback, storm chaser Tony Loback now joins us from Cape

00:06Girardeau, Missouri where it was just a very, very busy Sunday, Tony. Yeah, Bernie

00:15and yeah you mentioned it when you came on air that we have definitely put the

00:19cold and cold front that swept through here. Temperatures and AccuWeather real

00:23feels right now in the upper 30s and low 40s, so it is a chilly start here. Very

00:28far cry from what we were dealing with yesterday as temperatures got near 80

00:32degrees, but that fueled the severe thunderstorms across this region.

00:36Widespread, if you get across the river into southern Illinois, a lot of reports

00:41of hail up to two inches plus in diameter in areas like DuQuoin, outside

00:45of Carbondale and Fairfield. Those areas seeing quite a bit of hail. Out this way,

00:50further south you got, we saw hail approaching tennis ball size out of

00:54storms that look pretty impressive there for a while. We'll show you some of the

00:57footage here. This was last night after sunset when one of those tornadic storms

01:02crossed I-55. This was kind of near the Portageville area. We were in the RFD. I

01:07was right in the hook of this storm as this came through. It was warned for a

01:11tornado at the time, but there was no confirmed tornado that came through this

01:14area, thank goodness. You see a lot of the semi trucks that we had pulled over on

01:18the side of the road. Very mixed feeling on that one because obviously the semi

01:23trucks are usually the most vulnerable for crosswinds and they typically get

01:27blown over, but unfortunately a lot of them kind of clogging overpasses.

01:31Actually had a lot of issues with folks there stopping on overpasses and

01:35actually bringing traffic to a stop while a lot of them were taking shelter

01:38from some of the hail that was crossing the interstate. Folks, we do not, do not

01:43stop under underpasses. That is one of the worst places you can absolutely be,

01:47especially if you got a storm that might be producing a tornado. So that was

01:50certainly of some concern for folks there, but certainly yesterday widespread

01:55severe weather. A couple of limiting factors which I think kind of prevented

01:57more tornadoes down in this region. One of those being the surface winds. I

02:02talked about that when we went live on air yesterday guys, that we had southwest

02:05surface winds which really kind of kept the low-level shear down to a minimum

02:10and the close proximity. We had a cold front that was coming through. A lot of

02:13these storms were pretty close to it and it was kind of pulling in some of that

02:16cooler air on the backside of those storms. I noticed a lot of times the RFD,

02:21a lot of times that's kind of like the hint that tornadoes are about to form,

02:24a lot of those RFDs were quite cold and that really brings a lot of downward

02:28motion which kind of prevents a lot of tornadoes from happening. So a worst

02:33case scenario avoided yesterday, but certainly a, if you don't mind me saying,

02:36hail of a day for folks in this area.

02:40Meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach, thanks for that update as he

02:44continues to get ready for the next risk of severe weather, which we know is

02:47just days away, Bernie.