Severe storms led to multiple tornado threats in Louisiana on the evening of May 13.
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00:00 Welcome back to AccuWeather Ahead. We're tracking gusty, damaging thunderstorms throughout Louisiana.
00:05 Yeah, this is unfortunate. You can see the video here in Iowa, Louisiana. This is east of Lake Charles.
00:12 That's pretty intense. You can see very low visibility. The wind, it looks like the middle of the night here, but the sun at this hour, this is still before 6 p.m. Central time.
00:20 Yeah, still daylight.
00:21 Pretty impressive.
00:22 Yeah, these are the thunderstorms that have a lot of power and can do a lot of damage. Sheets of rain coming down, of course, with it.
00:28 And we've had some very, very strong winds, so that's been the big problem there, unfortunately, as we talk about this storm setup.
00:36 And these thunderstorms are still sliding east through Louisiana, so we still have severe thunderstorm watch boxes that are getting added in some locations and still the risk for more severe weather.
00:46 Yeah, and we have widespread destructive straight-line winds barreling through parts of south-central Louisiana, Opelousas into Lafayette, New Iberia.
00:54 We're seeing some of that. And we've had some occasional tornado warnings issued within this dangerous squall line.
01:00 So overall, as we look at the big picture here, we're going to switch over to a high-res radar view.
01:06 And the area around this area here facing strong straight-line winds, and this is looking from the area not too far off to the north and west.
01:17 Maybe Lake Charles could give us a better shot here.
01:20 But overall, the straight-line winds are accompanying this storm and the squall line that's moving through an area.
01:28 And where we have a couple of enhanced areas of strong straight-line winds to the north and also through parts of Iberia Parish and areas just to the north of there, up into St. Martin Parish and Lafayette Parish.
01:38 The city of Lafayette facing some fierce winds tied to this storm.
01:42 And as we look at the velocity scan, you can see that we are dealing with some bright red there, some strong outbound wind.
01:48 And there could be a brief tornado threat here into areas very close to Lafayette.
01:52 If you're in Lafayette, Louisiana, take shelter. Lafayette Parish and also into St. Martin Parish, mainly western St. Martin Parish, take shelter.
02:00 There is a possible tornado moving through your area.
02:02 But then this peach-colored warning is a widespread area from Vermilion Parish into Iberia Parish, where there is also some straight-line winds.
02:11 And these winds are destructive. They could lead to widespread damage.
02:15 And we are dealing with a lot of these widespread damage reports.
02:17 A few recent reports here, you can see three-inch tree limbs broken, power lines down and broken as well.
02:24 I'm going to slide this just off to the east a little bit so we can see things maybe a little more clearly.
02:31 Several vehicles blown off the road due to winds in Crowley Parish and Crowley and Acadia Parish of Louisiana.
02:38 That's some strongly phrased reports there. Power pole blown down and hail a little bit larger as well in Jennings.
02:46 So if a vehicle is being blown off the road in Crowley, that's a big deal.
02:51 And again, a very dangerous severe weather event in progress now into Louisiana right through Lafayette, approaching Baton Rouge.
02:58 So keep weather aware in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, here with this setup.
03:02 We have flash flooding ongoing in areas to the north, about 178, 180 miles here of continuous flash flood warnings.
03:09 Another area of concern, big-time hail crossing into southwest Texas here coming from the Rio Grande.
03:15 So portions of several counties here, Starr County, Zapata County, southwest Jim Hogg County and northern Zapata County,
03:21 facing straight-line winds and also especially large hail, a big hazard there with this setup.