AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live as supercells developed in Texas on the evening of April 28, ratcheting up the threat for severe weather.
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00:00We want to begin our live coverage this hour with Tony Lawback. He joins us live from near Vernon, Texas.
00:05And Tony, we went from not much going on there to action and more photogenic scene right behind you.
00:14Yeah, we're in the midst of watching pretty much the birth of what is likely going to be one of several supercells in the area here.
00:20I want to bring your attention to what is behind me. You notice what you're looking at here.
00:24If I stand in the middle, you'll notice there are two darkening areas on either side of me here.
00:28You've got the one off to the south and you've got the one off to the north.
00:31This is what we call a splitting supercell. This started out as one mass.
00:37And then as it really got going, the storm has started to split.
00:40You've heard me talking a couple of times today about how we're expecting tornadic conditions to start to ramp up as we get later into the evening when we start to see an increase in winds.
00:48Right now, because we've got lighter winds at the surface, it allows for the environment for storms like this to split.
00:55The northern one, which is off to the north, obviously, is going to be a hail producer.
01:00This is called the left split. That's going to move due north.
01:03This cell right here, the more dark with the lightning there, that was a gorgeous shot.
01:06You see kind of the hard cauliflower look to some of the cumulus clouds up top there.
01:10This is going to be the right mover.
01:12This is going to be the storm we're going to be focusing on for tornadic development.
01:16You want a visual here.
01:17Jeff, bring up the radar.
01:18I want to have you loop this radar because it shows real clearly when you look at this how it was kind of one blob.
01:24And then you notice you get two darker blobs now that have split off from this storm.
01:28So the storm has gone into split mode.
01:31That north one is going to move to the north, be a big hail producer.
01:34And then that one on the south, that's the one that's going to turn right.
01:37It's going to be a right mover.
01:39That's going to roll pretty much right along the Red River.
01:41That is going to be our initial storm threat.
01:44That is the one we're going to be watching with a big intent here over the next couple of hours.
01:48We do have a tornado watch in effect.
01:50We'll show you that graphic here real quick.
01:51This goes until 11 o'clock tonight.
01:53This extends all the way from Oklahoma City all the way down to I-20, so areas near Abilene, Midland, those areas in that tornado watch.
02:01Of course, we're right in the middle of it here along the Red River just outside of Vernon, Texas.
02:05So we're going to be watching these storms as they move east.
02:08Again, we're really concerned with extremely large damaging hail and the threat for tornadoes.
02:13Right now, I think in the near term, we're going to be watching this one.
02:16Again, you see it right here over my shoulder.
02:18A lot of features we're watching with this.
02:20It's hard to kind of get it all in one shot with the camera, but we're seeing kind of like little streaks of clouds that start to develop.
02:26Those are inflow tags that get pulled into that storm.
02:29And kind of, again, see right over my head just how kind of hard and cauliflower-like with that updraft.
02:35That is a sign that this storm is strengthening.
02:38We are seeing some kind of scud tags at the base here getting pulled in.
02:41So a lot of focus is going to be on this storm in the near term.
02:44So obviously, keep it here on the AccuWeather Network here.
02:46This is going to be like reality TV as we're going to be tracking the storm across the Red River here, northwest Texas, into southwest Oklahoma here over the next several hours.
02:54All right, Tony.
02:55Great visual there as this cell is just beginning to split.
02:58They're in parts of, well, northern parts of Hardiman County and western Wilbarger County there of Texas.
03:06There we have Mankato, Minnesota.
03:07Look at that dark sky up there to the north.
03:09It's pretty impressive stuff, and, again, this is where a lot of the more established severe weather has been to this point.
03:14We're tracking a few different cells that have been producing the risk of a tornado.
03:19Straight line winds with this whole zone here, and also we're facing the risk of large hail as well.