Storms lead to a flash flood potential in the Plains

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Kansas as repeated storms pummeled the Plains with drenching rain and heavy hail.

Transcript

00:00 And Tony, you've been tracking quite a cluster of thunderstorms as they've been drifting near and around Wichita.

00:06 Yeah, it's been a very active day across south central Kansas. We kind of figured it was going

00:14 to be. We thought the tornado threat was going to be relatively low. We still managed a few brief

00:19 tornadoes, many of them land spouts. Typically you get those when you start to get very, very robust

00:25 explosive updraft development. And a lot of times that updraft, that upward motion will pull some

00:30 circulation from the ground and then you get those little land spouts. But primarily it has been a

00:35 hail day. We've seen a lot of hail. I witnessed as big as golf ball size hail. We've seen as baseball

00:40 size hail reports. But now I think we're looking to transition to damaging winds and the potential

00:44 for flash flooding, which is very dangerous as we get into night. Let's show you the radar down this

00:48 way because we do have a lot going on. That line of storms, you kind of see what it's doing here.

00:53 It's kind of like drifting across the way there, going from east to west across the southern part

01:00 of Kansas. As a result, the eastward movement of those is going to maintain that potential for

01:06 storms to train over each other, meaning that it could rain multiple times and very heavy rain at

01:11 times and that could lead to some flash flooding. We'll bring you back live here. I'll show you

01:15 what's going on over my shoulder. We're on the leading edge of the severe storms that are starting

01:19 to work in. We do have a severe thunderstorm warning here in the wind field area. That

01:23 forward damaging winds for 60 miles per hour and a potential quarter sized hail. Starting to see

01:28 the rain picking up pretty heavily. And again, I think once we really get into the brunt of this

01:32 storm, we're going to be in it for a while. So I am concerned with some flooding potential southeast

01:37 of Wichita in this area. There's a lot of trees. It's kind of hilly terrain, very dangerous to drive

01:42 at night when you have that potential for flash flooding. So folks in southeast Kansas probably

01:46 don't want to be on the roads tonight. Flash flooding is extremely difficult to identify at

01:50 night. I do expect some street flooding here in wind field over the next half hour. So still a

01:55 dangerous night in store, although the transition from more hail and tornadoes definitely going for

02:00 damaging wind and flooding, Melissa. All right, meteorologist Tony Laubach there on the ground

02:06 in southeastern Kansas for us. Thank you, Tony. And as always, stay safe as you're traveling.

02:10 Still a few more days ahead and probably very tired, I would imagine at this point, but

02:15 got the Energizer bunny batteries in you somehow more than I have. Well, we do have these

02:21 thunderstorms extending well south here, and it's quite a long line. Actually, I'm going to measure

02:28 it for you. If you go from the Mexico border to southern Minnesota where those thunderstorms are,

02:33 it's more than a thousand miles that we're covering these thunderstorms. They have been

02:37 broken at times, and we've seen some of that activity actually recently die down in Texas.

02:42 You can watch as I loop things a lot more lightning strikes earlier, and that has since

02:47 whittled away with time. So I guess if there's anything, there's that good news there.