Tracking tornadoes and flooding across the central US

AccuWeather

Extreme storm chaser Aaron Jayjack recaps what he witnessed while tracking tornadoes and flooding caused by the storms across the central U.S. on April 2.

Transcript

00:00stream storm chaser Aaron Dajak. He joins us live from Ollage Branch, Mississippi,

00:06and before we talk about today, your impression of what you saw yesterday, Aaron?

00:14A very eventful day yesterday in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee. I was here in this

00:21Memphis area for most of the event. I started off in Joplin yesterday morning, made my way down here

00:27to the Mississippi River area. I was on multiple tornado warnings yesterday. East of Memphis into

00:33Tennessee, I tracked a couple of tornado-warned supercells there. Fortunately, those storms earlier

00:38in the day failed to produce tornadoes, but things changed drastically as we got into the evening

00:43hours. Towards sunset, west of Memphis into Arkansas, we started seeing multiple supercells

00:49start producing tornadoes. You mentioned that one in Lake City, Arkansas. It was a violent,

00:54large tornado that caused some damage there. Multiple other tornadoes being produced on some

00:59of the other cells in that area. Then, even into the overnight hours, I stayed the night here in

01:03Ollage Branch, Mississippi. After I went to sleep last night, I just found out about an hour ago, I

01:08was looking at social media reports, and there was a tornado, a large tornado, just 15 miles to my east

01:13right along that Tennessee-Mississippi border. A very active day yesterday into the evening hours,

01:19into the overnight hours, the most dangerous time for tornadoes. Fortunately, I haven't heard of any

01:24fatalities yet, but lots of damage so far. Another threat today is about to unfold. As

01:30you mentioned before, we talked about today, we're talking about yesterday, but today is another day,

01:35just like yesterday. Maybe not quite to the extent, but another day of severe weather is

01:39possible today here across the Mid-South. Flooding threat also is a significant concern here. As you

01:44can see, it's still raining. It's been raining all night. It's raining right now. Showers in

01:49the area. Nothing severe right now, but that's expected to change later today. I'll be tracking

01:54storms here from Memphis all the way southwest into Arkansas, southern Arkansas, down into

01:59Mississippi for, again, another round of severe weather where those storms look like they're going

02:03to train over the same area. I probably won't have to go very far to see severe weather again

02:08later today, and we're already dealing with some of the flooding effects.

02:12Aaron, two things for you really quick here. We were talking about those wedge

02:16tornadoes. Number one, explain to our viewers how wide they can be, and number two, have you ever

02:23seen a pattern where basically you're going to chase severe weather for the next three days

02:27and may not have to move much? Let's first talk about the wedge tornado and how wide they can be.

02:35Well, those wedge tornadoes, you know, they're called a wedge tornado because they're wider

02:39than they are tall. So generally you're getting, they appear in those, where you have a low cloud

02:45deck, but it grows into a very large tornado that can be up to two and a half miles wide.

02:51You know, you're going to see generally a wedge tornado is probably going to be

02:55at least a half mile wide and then bigger, up to two and a half miles wide as is possible

03:00with those wedge tornadoes. Now for this setup, now this is a unique setup. You know, I've chased

03:05multiple days of severe weather in my career, but it's always out into the plains it seems. You get

03:11multiple days of weather off of dry lines, where as a storm system approaches the Great Plains,

03:16you can get multiple days. But usually as a storm enters this part of the country,

03:20it races off to the northeast. It's a one day and done event. The cold fronts come down, push

03:26moisture out of the way. You don't have anything, fuel for storms, any more storms to work with until

03:32the environment, the atmosphere recharges and the next storm system comes through. Well, that's not

03:35the case for today. We've got these storms that are just lined up, expected to go off to the east.

03:42Now the meteorology aspects of it, there is a trough out to the east that's blocking the storm

03:47system from being able to race off to the east. And that's why we're going to get this multiple

03:51rounds of severe weather. And I think the biggest threat right now is going to be that flooding

03:55threat. When you get these storms over the same area, just pounding this area one storm after

04:00another, it's going to be a big time problems here in this area for flash flooding, especially

04:06if you go up north along the Mississippi River, you get into the southwestern Illinois, into the

04:12Boothill of Missouri, right where the two rivers, I believe it's the Ohio River and the Mississippi

04:16River meet together. That confluence there, we generally get a lot of bad flooding there this

04:20time of year and points to the south as storms could come through and drop torrential rains into this area.

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