AccuWeather's Leslie Hudson reported live from Arkansas on the evening of April 2 amid severe storms repeatedly striking the state.
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00:00And our live coverage continues this hour with Leslie Hudson.
00:02Leslie joins us live near Brinkley, Arkansas.
00:05Leslie, this is a really, really dangerous setup there.
00:08So what are you experiencing?
00:11Yeah, you know, Jeff, we're just outside Brinkley, Arkansas.
00:16And we've been chasing a tornado-worn storm
00:19over my shoulder.
00:20And it was getting a nice face, nice drop.
00:23And we saw a little bit of a wall cloud there just about 5
00:26or 10 minutes ago.
00:27We're in an area that we can't currently upload video.
00:30But we'll get that to you guys, turn that back around,
00:32so you can have it for the network.
00:34But it has just been a series of tornado-worn storms
00:37that have been in northwestern Arkansas.
00:38We are headed east towards the Memphis area, where, of course,
00:41we're anticipating.
00:42And they have already seen several of those tornado-worn
00:45storms today.
00:46And as you mentioned, the sun is setting here.
00:48So now this turns into a much more dangerous situation,
00:51trying to track the severe weather as the daylight goes
00:54away and you get rain-wrapped tornadoes that
00:57threaten much more serious for folks that may be out and about.
01:00I do know that we had talked to many officials,
01:03several officials, between yesterday and today
01:05when we got here yesterday.
01:07And the folks in this part of Arkansas have made the preps.
01:11Again, many folks were told to head home early
01:14if they were able to do so.
01:16Schools in northwestern Arkansas, several of them,
01:19especially in Little Rock in particular,
01:21closed at noon today so kids could get out of school
01:24and home, so parents could get home as well.
01:27We talked to some businesses that were also closing up early
01:30in preparation of this event, abundance of caution
01:33being the mantra here, if you will, that they're
01:35trying to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
01:38This area, of course, very used to severe weather and tornadic storms.
01:44We talked to one of the officials last hour
01:46that he was talking about where they had an EF3 here just a little bit ago,
01:51two years ago, and they are still in the rebuilding process from that EF3
01:55in the Little Rock area.
01:56So they know these storms well.
01:58They know what they can do in this area.
02:00And folks, of course, preparing for that.
02:02And then that second prong that we've also been talking about
02:05is that flash flooding event that potentially
02:08could be happening with up to a foot of rain
02:10as accuweather forecasters have been predicting.
02:13Again, generational rain is what some people are concerned about.
02:16So everyone here on alert, of course, and that now we're just
02:19really getting into the thick of things.
02:21We're going to continue to track it for you tonight.
02:23Near Brinkley, Arkansas, I'm Leslie Hudson.
02:27Back to you.
02:28All right, Leslie, thank you so much.
02:29And as you can see, she has very strong inbound winds here
02:32because that storm is right there behind her.
02:34And those inbound winds, that's what's really
02:36causing those winds to get stirred up and those tornadoes to get stirred up.