AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Kansas on the afternoon of Oct. 21 as fall thunderstorms swept across the region, dumping intense hail.
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00:00The threat for severe weather continues here for a portion of the Plains throughout this afternoon, this evening, and into tonight.
00:05And one man who's often on this is meteorologist Tony Laubach.
00:10He doesn't miss when it comes to severe weather, and I know that he's been on the prowl there.
00:14We haven't had a whole lot of severe weather in the Plains.
00:16He's been on tropical patrol lately, but, Damian, today, a little different.
00:19He's returned to Kansas.
00:21That's right, and as we take a closer look at the radar, you can see why,
00:24because we're starting to see a couple of these thunderstorms really getting going.
00:28We've had two storms that have persistently produced severe thunderstorm warnings.
00:32So, right now, we're joined by AccuWeather meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach.
00:36He joins us right now from Phillips County up in Kansas.
00:38So, Tony, so far, give me a report on what you're seeing out there.
00:44Well, things have gotten busy since the last time we spoke, Damian.
00:47We were talking earlier, about an hour and a half ago, how these storms were really just starting to get going.
00:52Well, that has happened.
00:53The storms that are got going have got going, and then some behind me over my shoulder here.
00:58This is the northern end of a line of storms in north central Kansas
01:02that I've been tracking for the better part of the last hour.
01:05What has that produced?
01:07Well, just a little bit of ice, and we'll show you some of that.
01:09This in Phillipsburg, this is about 15 or so minutes off to my west where I'm standing currently right now.
01:15This was some pretty decent amounts of hail.
01:17Most of it was pretty small.
01:19We did get hail, excuse me, up to one inch in diameter,
01:22but it was coming down in a frenzy.
01:24A lot of hail was covering the ground, made for some hazardous travel.
01:28A few folks were kind of fishtailing a little bit on the road
01:31as some of that hail was starting to cover the roadways there.
01:33In town, it was mainly the western side of town.
01:36Once you got on the east side of town, it was all rain,
01:38so most of the heavier core stayed off to the west of this.
01:42Again, about one inch hail is what we got out of that.
01:45So, again, technically, what makes a severe thunderstorm severe,
01:48one of those criteria, is one-inch hail,
01:50and that's exactly what we saw there in the town of Phillipsburg.
01:54We're going to show you the radar here because we want to show you
01:56that we've got kind of a cluster and a line of storms that are forming in this area.
02:00This is one of several bands that we're seeing develop ahead of this low-pressure system
02:04that's slowly working its way along the Kansas-Nebraska border.
02:07We do have that threat, maybe for a brief tornado,
02:10but I think really the big issue is going to be the large damaging hail.
02:14We do have a severe thunderstorm watch in effect for this area until 11 o'clock tonight.
02:19We'll bring you back live here because I've switched camera directions.
02:21You were looking off to the north behind me.
02:23Now we're looking back off to the southwest,
02:25and you kind of see there, Damien, that little lowering.
02:27That's kind of a developing wall cloud.
02:29Again, we're seeing kind of clusters in this.
02:31The issue, I think, with this in terms of the tornadic threat at the moment where I'm standing,
02:35temperatures are right around 50 degrees.
02:38It is very, very cold.
02:39When you get a lot of that precipitation, it pulls that cold air down to the surface
02:44and kind of blows it out here.
02:45So despite that wall cloud there, I think the tornado chances are going to be pretty low,
02:49but unfortunately, this is going to be a repeat for folks in the Phillipsburg area.
02:53We're going to see these storms continue to fill in.
02:55Again, that watch goes until 11 o'clock tonight,
02:57and you see the rain coming down right now around me.
02:59Might start seeing some pea-sized hail here in this vicinity before too long.
03:03We're going to be tracking these storms for the rest of the evening.
03:06All right, Tony, thank you so much.
03:0750-degree air is very heavy, and it's very hard to lift.
03:10So that definitely will possibly choke off some of these storms.
03:13So this is what we're going to be tracking here.
03:15So taking a closer look, one of the things I always like to look at
03:17is you look at the lightning intensity of these storms.
03:20If a storm is maintaining or increasing its lightning production,
03:23that means that it's maintaining as a healthy or a maturing storm.
03:26So that storm that Tony was talking about over Phillipsburg,
03:29it's still definitely producing a lot of lightning.
03:31So this one is possibly going to be the storm
03:33because the one to the west of it and the one to the southeast of it,
03:37that's looking like to me it's showing signs of the overall lightning
03:41starting to subside and depress just a little bit.
03:43So it does look like it's primarily going to be this storm here in Phillipsburg
03:47that is going to be the one that is going to produce the most damage,
03:49especially as far as some large hail.