00:00We're going to head now to meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Lawback joining us live from
00:04just outside of Robinson, Illinois. And Tony, the nasty setup there, pretty strong language
00:09from emergency management from the cell to your south. Yeah, Jeff, we're right on the north side
00:17of the core here. Unfortunately, on the north side of the storm, very, very difficult to
00:21see what's going on to my south. But we're working our way toward Palestine. Folks in Palestine,
00:28small town there right on the river. You're going to want to be taking your tornado precautions
00:32as the hook of this is probably going to pass just to your immediate south of here within the
00:36next 10 minutes or so. My hope here, Jeff, is that I can get down south on Highway 33, just
00:43south of
00:44town, get in behind this storm as it goes across the river. Unfortunately, we're getting pinched off
00:48right now in terms of road options, as I've got to take one of two road options out of here
00:54to get
00:54across the river to stay with this storm. So we're going to kind of take this loop to get right
00:59behind this storm. Right now, the tornado appears to be north, maybe just to the northeast of Flat Rock.
01:05So again, I think this is going to come in on the south side of Palestine, should cross
01:10Illinois Route 33, maybe a mile or two south of Palestine. So again, Palestine, you keep hearing me
01:16say your name. If you're in the town, certainly want to take your tornado precautions. You're not going
01:21to see it with the tornado town to your south, and you're already buried in some rain. I've had a
01:26few hailstones tink off the car here, but I'll throw it back to you, Jeff. You can kind of give
01:30a radar tour as I work my way in a better position here, and hopefully we can show you something
01:34here
01:34in the next few minutes. All right, Tony, be safe out there. Nasty driving conditions here in the core
01:39of the storm dropping south, and Tony mentioned Palestine here. The storm is likely to pass near or
01:45just barely south of Palestine as we take you to a loop here. I want to show you just, again,
01:51it is on
01:51a beeline to near Palestine. We're going to zoom in here, but we're looking at a one-hour loop here,
01:56and if we were to trace the shear, it's coming very close to Palestine. This is the Wabash River,
02:03so we're looking at Indiana to the east, Illinois to the west, and the area of significant rotation is
02:09very close to Duncanville, barely north of Flat Rock. This is Crawford County of Illinois, and if you're
02:14tuning in from the area of, as we pause this here, into Sullivan County of Indiana, you've got a
02:21confirmed tornado moving in your direction, so a confirmed tornado, and emergency management
02:27describing this as an extremely dangerous and destructive tornado here, and as we take a look
02:32at a recent report, one of the earlier reports, the first point of touchdown was two and a half miles
02:37north of Chauncey, but that was back at 412 central time, so that was about, what, 21 minutes ago.
02:44So this storm has rapidly moved east-northeast, and again, it continues to move through the area of
02:50southeastern and now basically just eastern Crawford County of Illinois, approaching the Wabash River
02:56and moving into Sullivan County, Indiana in a short period of time. So it's moving pretty swiftly to the
03:02east here, and if we were to extrapolate movement to the east at maybe a little more than 30, 35
03:07miles per hour,
03:08it's going to be moving again right through the core of western Sullivan County in the next 30 minutes
03:15or so. And Palestine here along the river, this is one area where Tony's concerned. Again, the storm is going
03:21to be
03:21passing just on the south side of Palestine, right over the river, the Wabash River, moving into parts of
03:28Indiana. So that's a very dangerous situation here. Emergency management reporting that this is a confirmed
03:35tornado, and again, warnings are in effect here on the Illinois side until 515 central time and then until
03:43six o'clock eastern time. We hit the time zone line there with the Wabash River popping into southwestern
03:48Indiana until six o'clock eastern for the Indiana side of that storm. There are a few other cells that
03:54were tracking very closely. We still have some rotation to the north, and there are two other
04:00storms that again have exhibited some rotation for quite some time. I suspect as the southern cell
04:05becomes a little more dominant, we may see a decrease at least to the north for the area of
04:10rotation here near Marshall, Illinois, and then also an area of rotation approaching York and
04:16Hudsonville. Take shelter if you are in eastern or southeastern Clark County of Illinois, if you're in far
04:22southeastern Clark County of Illinois or far northeastern Crawford County, you've got a couple
04:26of two separate rotating storms there that have exhibited rotation for some time, but the confirmed
04:31tornado, according to eyes from emergency management, continues to move through parts of Crawford County
04:36of Illinois, and again, a dangerous situation. Crawford County of Illinois, Palestine, Illinois,
04:42down to other areas east like Carlisle, Indiana, Sullivan County of Indiana, you're under a tornado warning
04:48as well. So those are the biggest concerns on the map right now. I'm going to take us a little
04:55farther
04:55east here now to show you some other storms that we've been tracking. The severe risk is decreasing
05:01among the storms that have moved through eastern Kentucky. Lightning count still fairly strong south
05:05of Charleston, West Virginia, but that severe thunderstorm threat decreasing a bit. You can see the polygons
05:11fading off of the map for now. There will be a return to severe threats into parts of Kentucky,
05:17including eastern Kentucky, later this evening when the main disturbance, the primary disturbance off
05:22to the west moves farther east. Looking at the visible satellite loop here, you can see kind of
05:28the textured bubbly nature to the clouds here, and it's again this time of the year we're going to see
05:33that sunset fairly soon, but you can see this sheared environment where there are not many, but just
05:39some areas of deeper convection amid areas that are a little brighter that have not seen as many clouds
05:45today. The atmosphere is still primed for severe weather farther south, even though we haven't
05:49seen a whole lot of convective development beyond that first round that moved through Lexington,
05:53Kentucky. And stepping a little farther south, there is a brand new severe thunderstorm warning
05:58that has just been issued over part of southern Boone County of West Virginia and eastern Logan
06:04County. This is moving into a more rural area for now. If it makes it intact to Beckley, that would
06:09be a
06:09more high-impact zone. So we need to keep an eye out for all these storms, especially those along the
06:15Wabash River Valley crossing from southeastern Illinois into southwestern Indiana. And the main
06:19concern here is this cell moving from near and east of Robinson, approaching the area of Palestine,
06:26Illinois. Richwoods, Illinois, take shelter. If you're in those areas, you need to be in a shelter.
06:31Get down into the basement, the lowest floor of your home, and you take all those tornado precautions.
06:36Outbound wind in red, inbound wind in green. So the area of rotation generally moving into an area
06:44very close to Richwoods and approaching Palestine, between Richwoods and Palestine along the Wabash
06:50River. So eastern and southeastern Crawford County into southwestern Sullivan County. Those are the
06:55areas of greatest concern. The tornado watch continues for this whole area across the lower Ohio Valley,
07:01southeast Illinois, southern Indiana, much of central and northwestern Kentucky, even into the
07:07bluegrass region of central Kentucky. Here we're dealing with a tornado watch until 9 p.m. Eastern or
07:118 p.m. Central time. Your severe risk area includes Indianapolis as well, moderate risk there, but the
07:18greatest threat along and south of I-70, given the radar trends in southeast Illinois and southwestern,
07:25eventually south central Indiana, and along the immediate Ohio River Valley there into Kentucky.
07:30That's a two out of four on the AccuWeather Threat Level Index, and we're looking at a medium risk of
07:34wind
07:34and tornadoes with the current setup. Very volatile right now as we move forward.
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