Severe thunderstorms produced prolific hail across parts of the Plains on April 25, but cold air undercut the threat for tornadoes.
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00:00 We're going to head out to the
00:02 plains with meteorologist and
00:03 storm chaser Tony law back who
00:05 joins us on the road from Quinter,
00:07 Kansas. Hey Tony.
00:08 Hey Melissa, yeah, we're just
00:12 rolling through this tiny town at
00:14 Quinter on I-70 eastbound right now,
00:16 kind of throwing in the towel on the day
00:18 today and I'll explain a little bit
00:20 why here coming up in a bit, but really,
00:23 it has been kind of a more of a hail day
00:26 today thanks in part to a lot of these
00:28 storms being undercut by cool air at
00:30 the surface and that is really gotten.
00:33 The tornado risk in Kansas for the
00:34 most part down and the hail threat was up.
00:37 Will show you some of the video didn't
00:39 get the biggest of the hail that fell
00:41 today in Kansas, but we did see some
00:43 of that hail on a storm north of
00:45 Goodland, Kansas early on in this event.
00:47 Today most of this hail we saw was
00:49 anywhere between nickel and quarter size.
00:51 We had hail reports in Kansas as
00:52 big as 2 1/2 inches.
00:54 That would be tennis ball size hail,
00:56 but again, a lot of these storms
00:57 were rotating but were getting undercut.
00:59 There was one brief tornado out
01:01 of this storm north of Goodland,
01:03 literally only touched down for a
01:05 few seconds before it lifted again.
01:06 Most of the tornadic activity,
01:08 believe it or not,
01:09 actually remained back in Colorado,
01:10 where we've had several
01:12 landspout tornado reports.
01:13 Come out of Northeast Colorado there,
01:14 but again,
01:15 the storms just dealing with a lot
01:17 of cold air at the surface in
01:19 conjunction with those storms moving
01:20 over the warm front north of the warm
01:23 front or we had outflow from the storms.
01:25 Earlier this morning that
01:26 cooled the atmosphere.
01:27 At the ground level that kept these
01:29 storms elevated and thus produced
01:31 more hail than a tornado threat.
01:32 We're seeing that continue this evening.
01:34 There are a few isolated storms
01:36 still along the dry line that
01:37 may pose some concern.
01:38 The severe weather threat certainly
01:40 not done by any stretch,
01:41 but a really big day in store
01:43 for us tomorrow, Melissa.
01:44 That is what we've got to get ready for here,
01:47 so we're going to throw in the
01:48 towel for today, head East,
01:50 and get set up for tomorrow.
01:51 Alright,
01:51 sounds like a plan Tony and of course
01:53 rest up that voice too because like
01:55 I said, we've got a couple of days ahead
01:57 of you. Well, we do have these
01:59 thunderstorms that are still on the move,
02:01 and I just want to break down some of
02:03 the different things that Tony talked about.
02:05 I wanted, though,
02:05 before I break down all of the
02:07 thunderstorms highlight that there
02:08 are thunderstorms well north into
02:09 North Dakota at this point in time.
02:11 Some of those though are not severe.
02:13 Some of them are severe in South Dakota.
02:15 We've had some wind threats with
02:16 these thunderstorms as they continue
02:17 to push these even a little bit of hail,
02:20 but most of those are losing some
02:21 of their strength as they work their
02:23 way basically towards the Missouri River.
02:25 There, as you can see.
02:26 So there's still thunderstorms that
02:27 are going to rattle and rumble around,
02:29 but as you work your way through
02:31 Nebraska and stuff you can see this
02:33 is where we start to get into some
02:35 more of the warn storms, especially
02:37 into northeastern Colorado.
02:38 Most of those warnings now recently expiring,
02:40 but into northwestern Kansas.
02:41 This is still where we have so
02:43 many of those warnings.
02:44 I'm going to pause it here on the last frame.
02:47 There are a couple of things
02:48 that we want to highlight,
02:50 like like Tony was mentioning,
02:51 we have this storm threat that's
02:53 kind of setting up and as those
02:55 storms lift well in advance of that,
02:57 actually that one prints a little
02:58 farther South, but as they lift a
03:00 well north of that as they keep moving
03:02 north, that's when they're losing.
03:04 That's that energy and getting
03:05 to be above the cold air,
03:07 which is why we aren't seeing as
03:08 much in the way of significant
03:10 storm development.
03:11 A lot of those storms end up weakening.