Tony's top 3 tornado chases of 2023

AccuWeather meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach shares his top three tornado chases of 2023.

Transcript

00:00 This storm, I'm not kidding you folks, has produced at least half a dozen tornadoes.

00:04 2023 will go into the books for me as my best most prolific storm chasing season in a 26 year career.

00:11 With so many wild and incredible days to choose from, you'd think it'd be tough to pick just three.

00:16 But it didn't take long to make this list, and when a seven tornado day in the high plains

00:21 doesn't make the cut, you know it was an intense year. This is insanity.

00:26 My third best chase came early in the season, March 31st in southeast Iowa near the city of

00:32 Ottumwa. My chase partner Ed Grubb and myself intercepted one of the strongest tornadoes of

00:37 the year. The parent storm was one we had been monitoring for nearly two hours as it gathered

00:42 strength across the border in Missouri. We're going to take you to radar, we're going to zoom

00:46 in right away here because we want to show you what we're looking at coming at us here. This

00:49 one's going to be moving up into the Ottumwa area, likely in the next hour to hour and a half.

00:55 As the storm approached us from the south, we watched a small dust world turn into this

00:59 incredibly large tornado on a picture-perfect close proximity intercept. This would be the

01:04 first tornado we'd put live on the AccuWeather network in what was to be a very busy season.

01:09 An extremely large tornado. This is on the ground. You are seeing this live, folks.

01:14 My second best chase of the year was one of my last chases of the season. Here in eastern

01:19 Colorado on August 8th, a small outbreak of tornadoes yielded one of my biggest career

01:24 milestones. That is one of the tornadoes. There's actually a second circulation right

01:29 off in the back corner here. So we've actually got two areas of circulation.

01:32 For the first time ever, I was able to do a live hit in front of a tornado,

01:36 but not just any tornado, a very unique tornado that transitioned through multiple phases as it

01:41 looped around itself several times, going from a dusty mess to one of the most photogenic tornadoes

01:47 of the year. The National Weather Service has issued caution to watch 350 for the following

01:52 areas in northeast Colorado, Logan, Morgan, Washington, Weld. This includes the cities of

01:59 Ecklon. My number one chase of the year is also my number one chase of my career,

02:03 and it happened right here in my home state of Colorado, just a couple hours from home.

02:08 A historic day in the state as a new record for the most tornadoes in a single day was set with

02:12 36 touchdowns, 19 of which I saw on this single storm as it produced one of the best shows of the

02:19 year, if not the decade. This is not typical for Colorado. Three tornadoes, two of them ghostly

02:29 white and very high contrast, spinning around each other in the open fields northeast of Denver.

02:34 A storm that produced tornado after tornado for over an hour,

02:41 easily making for the most incredible chase day of the season and my life.

02:46 You gotta be kidding me right now.

02:48 For AccuWeather, I'm meteorologist Tony Lovack.