AccuWeather's Tony Laubach is in Missouri, where storms and hail hit on Sunday.
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00:00Meteorologist Tony Loback, storm chaser Tony Loback now joins us from Cape
00:06Girardeau, Missouri where it was just a very, very busy Sunday, Tony. Yeah, Bernie
00:15and yeah you mentioned it when you came on air that we have definitely put the
00:19cold and cold front that swept through here. Temperatures and AccuWeather real
00:23feels right now in the upper 30s and low 40s, so it is a chilly start here. Very
00:28far cry from what we were dealing with yesterday as temperatures got near 80
00:32degrees, but that fueled the severe thunderstorms across this region.
00:36Widespread, if you get across the river into southern Illinois, a lot of reports
00:41of hail up to two inches plus in diameter in areas like DuQuoin, outside
00:45of Carbondale and Fairfield. Those areas seeing quite a bit of hail. Out this way,
00:50further south you got, we saw hail approaching tennis ball size out of
00:54storms that look pretty impressive there for a while. We'll show you some of the
00:57footage here. This was last night after sunset when one of those tornadic storms
01:02crossed I-55. This was kind of near the Portageville area. We were in the RFD. I
01:07was right in the hook of this storm as this came through. It was warned for a
01:11tornado at the time, but there was no confirmed tornado that came through this
01:14area, thank goodness. You see a lot of the semi trucks that we had pulled over on
01:18the side of the road. Very mixed feeling on that one because obviously the semi
01:23trucks are usually the most vulnerable for crosswinds and they typically get
01:27blown over, but unfortunately a lot of them kind of clogging overpasses.
01:31Actually had a lot of issues with folks there stopping on overpasses and
01:35actually bringing traffic to a stop while a lot of them were taking shelter
01:38from some of the hail that was crossing the interstate. Folks, we do not, do not
01:43stop under underpasses. That is one of the worst places you can absolutely be,
01:47especially if you got a storm that might be producing a tornado. So that was
01:50certainly of some concern for folks there, but certainly yesterday widespread
01:55severe weather. A couple of limiting factors which I think kind of prevented
01:57more tornadoes down in this region. One of those being the surface winds. I
02:02talked about that when we went live on air yesterday guys, that we had southwest
02:05surface winds which really kind of kept the low-level shear down to a minimum
02:10and the close proximity. We had a cold front that was coming through. A lot of
02:13these storms were pretty close to it and it was kind of pulling in some of that
02:16cooler air on the backside of those storms. I noticed a lot of times the RFD,
02:21a lot of times that's kind of like the hint that tornadoes are about to form,
02:24a lot of those RFDs were quite cold and that really brings a lot of downward
02:28motion which kind of prevents a lot of tornadoes from happening. So a worst
02:33case scenario avoided yesterday, but certainly a, if you don't mind me saying,
02:36hail of a day for folks in this area.
02:40Meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach, thanks for that update as he
02:44continues to get ready for the next risk of severe weather, which we know is
02:47just days away, Bernie.