AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Iowa as severe storms swept through the Midwest on April 16.
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00:00So we're closely monitoring the situation here. Accuweather's meteorologist Tony
00:04Loback is tracking these troublesome storms and he joins us live here with,
00:08again from Iowa. Tony, what's the latest?
00:13Well we're about an hour southeast of Des Moines, Iowa right now. We've been tracking that line of
00:17storms that's been working out of northern Missouri. A very messy and complicated situation
00:23really kind of making it very, very difficult to track storms. We were talking about this this
00:27morning when we were noting that early round of storms was going to come through. It was going to
00:31play havoc with the instability. That has certainly been the case as storms have had a hard time
00:35really materializing that second round, that second line. You heard it there in the open,
00:39we're talking about that second round of storms. That has had a hard time getting going here in
00:43southern Iowa. That is what we've been tracking over the last hour or so. I do want to take you
00:47up on the maps here because we have numerous tornado watches in effect. Really the one of
00:51note is the one across northwest Iowa where we have seen a majority of the tornadoes kind of
00:58northwest Iowa into parts of northeast Nebraska. It has really been kind of cranking up there near
01:05the surface low. The overall instability up that way hasn't been particularly high but the rotation
01:13has allowed for those storms to really rotate. We've had it like you mentioned almost double
01:17digit tornado reports across portions of northeast Nebraska up into northwest Iowa.
01:22There is some hints that we may see other storms. Currently a storm just to the northwest of Fort
01:27Dodge has had several confirmed tornadoes with it and then we do see kind of hints of development
01:32south and southeast along kind of a line of cumulus that might be something to watch there
01:38especially for folks in the Des Moines area and just west and northwest of Des Moines over the
01:42next couple hours if we can get more storms to fire south of that current tornadic storm right
01:47now. We'll bring you back live here. We'll show you out the windshield as we're making a run
01:51to near Oskaloosa right now. We are making that turn to the north. Ed Grubb my storm chase partner
01:56doing the driving right now as we are repositioning. Again don't think the severe weather threat in
02:00southeast Iowa is over by any stretch but that is more linear right now. I think that is going to
02:05pose more of a damaging wind threat. Those storms have been clocked at moving as high as 75 miles
02:11per hour so again that damaging wind threat certainly a big concern for folks across southeast
02:15Iowa along U.S. 34 but I think the tornado threat right now is going to be highest in northwest Iowa.
02:21That's the direction we're going to point ourselves to and we'll see if that maintains its threat
02:25through the evening here Justin. All right Tony thanks for that report. I do see a new tornado
02:29warning issued here north of Cedar Rapids but like you said the cell here near Fort Dodge also
02:34having a confirmed tornado with it so we're going to get to those storms here right now. There's the
02:39position that Tony mentioned there Oskaloosa situated not too far from him right now.