Rain brings both relief and risk to parts of the central US

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from northwest Arkansas as storms led to flash flooding in parts of the Heartland on Sept. 23.

Transcript

00:00Right now, desperately needed rain is reaching parts of the central U.S.

00:03It's welcome news for drought-stricken areas, but not without consequences.

00:07AccuWeather meteorologist Tony Laubach is tracking it all.

00:10He's live tonight in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with more on the impacts.

00:13But, Tony, I heard this morning you had cows behind you, and I'm not seeing any cows.

00:21Well, that's probably because they've all sunk here.

00:23I'm going to walk away from the camera, and I know you're not going to see it from the distance here,

00:27but, like, this lawn here outside of this truck stop is like walking on a sponge right now.

00:33Every step I take, water coming up from the ground and actually coming over the tops of my shoes at times

00:40to give you an idea just how saturated the ground here is in Fayetteville.

00:44On the south side behind me, this is Interstate 49.

00:47You see the faster-moving traffic in the background.

00:49This is the ramp that gets onto the highway here next to the truck stop.

00:53So folks moving pretty good here after the storms have cleared on out.

00:57They have moved down to the south and brought all of the heavy rain with them,

01:01and that has included some of the minor flooding that I have come across.

01:04We've seen worse in more of the mountainous areas, but this is just some of the stuff that I got.

01:09This is down near the Lincoln area here off of U.S. 62.

01:12We saw some heavy rain, some pretty impressive clouds.

01:15I'm going to try to get some of that video in for the next hit.

01:17But we saw a lot of those storms form very, very quickly.

01:21We've been talking about the severe weather being tied to the outflow boundary from last night's storms.

01:26That kind of draped in this area.

01:28And typically you see one of a couple of things happen in setups like this.

01:31The first case scenario, and typically the worst in terms of tornadoes,

01:34you get a couple of isolated storms that develop on that outflow boundary,

01:38and they become prolific tornado producers.

01:40You see some of the strongest tornadoes come out of setups like that.

01:43But in a case like today, we saw a lot of storms pretty much go up at the same time along that outflow boundary.

01:49And then what happens is those storms kind of form into a cluster,

01:53kind of move and train along that boundary as it has slowly moved to the south.

01:58And that really makes the flash flooding and the occasional damaging wind gusts the bigger threat with that,

02:04despite the conditions that would warrant an increased potential for tornadoes.

02:09Again, that's all going to be conditional on whether or not those storms remain discreet.

02:12Up until this point, that has not been the case.

02:15So it has really been more of a flooding threat we've seen here develop in northwest Arkansas.

02:20This is very mountainous, hilly terrain up and through here.

02:23So flash flooding is certainly an issue, especially in some of the back roads, the lesser traveled areas.

02:27Fayetteville, we've seen reports of some flooded intersections and some of the towns surrounding it as well.

02:32Nothing significant in the major metro area here.

02:36You get a little bit further out to the east and you get in the more hilly, more mountainous terrain.

02:40That's when we are starting to see some of those problems, some of the impassable roads,

02:44because a lot of these, again, are just kind of curvy, windy roads that go up and down some of these hills.

02:48Again, not talking the mountains of Colorado necessarily,

02:51but certainly not an area you would typically associate with mountainous terrain,

02:56but that is the case here in northwest Arkansas.

02:58Tornado Watch does stay in effect until 10 o'clock.

03:01That does include Tulsa and points east to my north,

03:04and I am watching some storms in the Tulsa area.

03:06That might be my next pick.

03:07So we'll be tracking those storms well into the evening up here, guys.

03:10All right, good stuff, Tony.

03:11Nice shot of good stormwater management practice there with that concrete chute

03:16where the water is coming down like a rapid.

03:18If not for that, that would be kind of digging a little canyon

03:21through some of the grass and the soil there.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended