Extreme storm chaser Aaron Jayjack recaps what he witnessed while tracking tornadoes and flooding caused by the storms across the central U.S. on April 2.
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00:00stream storm chaser Aaron Dajak. He joins us live from Ollage Branch, Mississippi,
00:06and before we talk about today, your impression of what you saw yesterday, Aaron?
00:14A very eventful day yesterday in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee. I was here in this
00:21Memphis area for most of the event. I started off in Joplin yesterday morning, made my way down here
00:27to the Mississippi River area. I was on multiple tornado warnings yesterday. East of Memphis into
00:33Tennessee, I tracked a couple of tornado-warned supercells there. Fortunately, those storms earlier
00:38in the day failed to produce tornadoes, but things changed drastically as we got into the evening
00:43hours. Towards sunset, west of Memphis into Arkansas, we started seeing multiple supercells
00:49start producing tornadoes. You mentioned that one in Lake City, Arkansas. It was a violent,
00:54large tornado that caused some damage there. Multiple other tornadoes being produced on some
00:59of the other cells in that area. Then, even into the overnight hours, I stayed the night here in
01:03Ollage Branch, Mississippi. After I went to sleep last night, I just found out about an hour ago, I
01:08was looking at social media reports, and there was a tornado, a large tornado, just 15 miles to my east
01:13right along that Tennessee-Mississippi border. A very active day yesterday into the evening hours,
01:19into the overnight hours, the most dangerous time for tornadoes. Fortunately, I haven't heard of any
01:24fatalities yet, but lots of damage so far. Another threat today is about to unfold. As
01:30you mentioned before, we talked about today, we're talking about yesterday, but today is another day,
01:35just like yesterday. Maybe not quite to the extent, but another day of severe weather is
01:39possible today here across the Mid-South. Flooding threat also is a significant concern here. As you
01:44can see, it's still raining. It's been raining all night. It's raining right now. Showers in
01:49the area. Nothing severe right now, but that's expected to change later today. I'll be tracking
01:54storms here from Memphis all the way southwest into Arkansas, southern Arkansas, down into
01:59Mississippi for, again, another round of severe weather where those storms look like they're going
02:03to train over the same area. I probably won't have to go very far to see severe weather again
02:08later today, and we're already dealing with some of the flooding effects.
02:12Aaron, two things for you really quick here. We were talking about those wedge
02:16tornadoes. Number one, explain to our viewers how wide they can be, and number two, have you ever
02:23seen a pattern where basically you're going to chase severe weather for the next three days
02:27and may not have to move much? Let's first talk about the wedge tornado and how wide they can be.
02:35Well, those wedge tornadoes, you know, they're called a wedge tornado because they're wider
02:39than they are tall. So generally you're getting, they appear in those, where you have a low cloud
02:45deck, but it grows into a very large tornado that can be up to two and a half miles wide.
02:51You know, you're going to see generally a wedge tornado is probably going to be
02:55at least a half mile wide and then bigger, up to two and a half miles wide as is possible
03:00with those wedge tornadoes. Now for this setup, now this is a unique setup. You know, I've chased
03:05multiple days of severe weather in my career, but it's always out into the plains it seems. You get
03:11multiple days of weather off of dry lines, where as a storm system approaches the Great Plains,
03:16you can get multiple days. But usually as a storm enters this part of the country,
03:20it races off to the northeast. It's a one day and done event. The cold fronts come down, push
03:26moisture out of the way. You don't have anything, fuel for storms, any more storms to work with until
03:32the environment, the atmosphere recharges and the next storm system comes through. Well, that's not
03:35the case for today. We've got these storms that are just lined up, expected to go off to the east.
03:42Now the meteorology aspects of it, there is a trough out to the east that's blocking the storm
03:47system from being able to race off to the east. And that's why we're going to get this multiple
03:51rounds of severe weather. And I think the biggest threat right now is going to be that flooding
03:55threat. When you get these storms over the same area, just pounding this area one storm after
04:00another, it's going to be a big time problems here in this area for flash flooding, especially
04:06if you go up north along the Mississippi River, you get into the southwestern Illinois, into the
04:12Boothill of Missouri, right where the two rivers, I believe it's the Ohio River and the Mississippi
04:16River meet together. That confluence there, we generally get a lot of bad flooding there this
04:20time of year and points to the south as storms could come through and drop torrential rains into this area.