Storm chasers watching risk for severe storms in the central Plains

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach breaks down the threat for storms across Iowa and surrounding areas on Sept. 14.

Transcript

00:00While not entirely unusual, here we are in the peak of hurricane season and we're going to be talking about

00:05possibly a significant severe weather event in the central plains.

00:10We're going to be looking at areas in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa today for what could be a high

00:14ceiling event, but a lot of caveats with this.

00:18On paper, this looks like it could be fairly significant, bringing large to very large hail and perhaps a couple

00:23of tornadoes,

00:24but a lot of things that are kind of not terribly favorable to work that out necessarily.

00:29We're talking a lot of rain and storms early this morning that took some time to clear on out and

00:34that is going to re-overturn that atmosphere a little bit

00:39and it really is going to depend on how quickly that atmosphere can recover.

00:43Days like today are always kind of those last minute, is this or will it or won't it kind of

00:48thing.

00:48And we're talking about a warm front, a lifting warm front.

00:50So south of that front, you have a very unstable air mass.

00:54The question is, does that unstable air mass make it up here in time to get under what is more

00:59favorable in the higher levels just above the surface?

01:02If you can match those two up, we could be talking about that chance for very large hail, tornadoes and

01:07damaging wind.

01:08Otherwise, we're going to be looking at a very stormy, pretty nasty evening in those areas we mentioned in eastern

01:13Nebraska and western Iowa.

01:14So damaging winds, definitely a concern.

01:16It's going to be flash flooding that's going to not only be an issue today, but lingering through the middle

01:22part of the week.

01:22Areas across western and central Iowa, they're going to be amongst many areas that could see several inches of rain

01:27throughout the rest of the week.

01:28So a busy week in store here for the central plains and we'll be keeping an eye on that here

01:32today.

01:33Reporting for AccuWeather in Grand Island, Nebraska, I'm meteorologist Tony Lawback.

01:37We'll be back.