00:00Farther south, storm chaser and meteorologist Tony Laubach is on the move for his 30th season chasing storms.
00:08And he's joining us now from Perry, Oklahoma.
00:11Man, the rain is coming down. Maybe some hail out there.
00:13Tony, how's it going?
00:16Well, Jeff, we are moving southbound on I-35 here.
00:21So we're just at the south of Perry at exit 180, kind of pointed in the direction of Oklahoma City.
00:26On a bunch of storms, we talked about it last hour.
00:30And if you remember the radar, there were just a few storms that were popping up to do it so
00:33quickly.
00:34It has filled in considerably since then.
00:37Obviously, right now, as you can see on the camera, it is a little bit of what we'll call it
00:43an unfriendly drive here along I-35.
00:46So we are approaching the town of Guthrie in Orlando from the north.
00:52And we're punching through the core of one of those storms that have developed ahead of a line of storms
00:58here.
00:58Jeff can drive the radar.
01:00You can see just the mess that has unzipped here across western and northern Oklahoma over the last hour and
01:06a half.
01:07We're seeing several severe storms that have kind of pulsed off and on.
01:11But as we get more of these storms, they kind of compete with each other for the instability.
01:16And the hail doesn't quite get as large as we would see with the isolated supercells.
01:22So most of the hail that we are being warned for generally is under an inch and a half.
01:27So that is pretty good.
01:29Right now, the main warning is just to our north on a severe storm.
01:33And we are seeing, again, some small amounts of hail, occasionally getting some tinks on the car.
01:38But we haven't seen anything, I'd say, bigger than nickels so far.
01:42The storm that we're driving through right now is not severe.
01:46And again, right now, we're not seeing any hail with that as it crosses I-35 here.
01:50This would be just to the west of Stillwater and north of Guthrie.
01:54So this is the storm we're kind of focused on.
01:57You might be wondering why we're focusing on this particular cell.
01:59It is isolated and ahead of the line.
02:03So that's kind of one of the signs we look for in a setup like this is whether or not
02:07this storm ahead,
02:09isolated, kind of in undisturbed air, has a tendency to intensify.
02:14And those kind of become the bigger tornado threats than anything we're seeing back further to the west,
02:19which is kind of a mess of line of storms that mainly is going to pose a damaging wind threat
02:24with some hail embedded in there at times.
02:26Right now, well west of Oklahoma City.
02:29The line extending all the way back into northwest Texas.
02:32We'll start to see that fill in.
02:34So unfortunately for cities like Oklahoma City and Tulsa,
02:38the storms are going to be working in over the next couple hours.
02:41Tornado watch in the area goes until midnight tonight.
02:44That does include Oklahoma City.
02:46It just nudges up to Tulsa.
02:49So Tulsa's threat likely going to be a little bit later tonight as opposed to Oklahoma City.
02:53But certainly the threat for tornadoes, large hail, and damaging winds will continue.
02:58We'll keep track of these storms here as they push their way on off to the east.
03:02Again, that tornado watch, including Oklahoma City, goes until midnight tonight.
03:06So be aware, especially as those storms to the west continue to intensify and get organized,
03:12I do think there will be more of a damaging wind threat.
03:14But unfortunately, Jeff, even with that, some spin-up tornadoes not out of the question.
03:19So a busy night here across central Oklahoma.
03:22Welcome to spring.
03:24We're getting into April, so naturally we're going to get right into things here.
03:28All right, Tony.
03:29We appreciate that report there from Perry, Oklahoma,
03:32as he's closing in on the Guthrie area,
03:33coming down from Perry southward to Guthrie,
03:36trying to sniff out the next area of development here
03:39as we get into hopefully undisturbed waters for Tony's sake there.
03:44But that's where some storms could be more volatile later on.
03:46Again, as he mentioned, a lot of competition between these storms.
03:50Just with the cell interactions, just a very muddy, murky, chaotic environment here.
03:56At one point, we had four or five severe thunderstorm warnings
03:59in western and central and north-central Oklahoma.
04:01So the outflow from those storms interacting with one another
04:05and, again, just kind of in some cases choking off additional thunderstorms
04:10from becoming too severe, which is good news,
04:12but it is messy for anybody on the roads, obviously, with all that heavy rain.
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