Large tornado captured live on AccuWeather

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Earling, Iowa, on the evening of April 26, giving AccuWeather viewers a real-time look of a massive tornado.

Transcript

00:00Now, meteorologist Tony Laubach is chasing. He's in Eerling, Iowa, and we want to check in with

00:05you, Tony. I know that you are on this cell. You're on the north side of this tornado emergency

00:10warn cell. So, what are you observing? Well, a very large tornado. We're just getting it on view

00:18here on the stream. I'm going to get zoomed in for you here. There you go. Live look. Tornado

00:22emergency. Tornado on the ground right now. This is just to the south of Eerling. This is a very

00:27large tornado. We're kind of in some hilly terrain here, so you got to bear with us.

00:30While we get to a safe place, we can get a view on this thing here. But yeah, you're going to

00:33come and see it over the hill here. That is a large, large tornado here. Again, apologize for

00:39the terrain. We're looking for a clear spot to shoot this. But yeah, Jeff, this is ongoing right

00:44now, that tornado emergency. We are verifying it here live on the AccuWeather network. A large

00:48tornado on the ground. This would be near the Panama area, south of Eerling, heading toward

00:53Highway 59. This is a very, very large tornado. We finally got a place here to stop. We're going

00:59to go ahead and do that right now. Get you centered up here. This is it right here, guys.

01:02Large tornado. This is probably a wedge, maybe half a mile wide. That is a very large tornado

01:08that is coming in over the hill right now. This storm has had confirmed tornadoes with it for a

01:13good chunk of its life cycle here, and it is going to continue to do so. You can see the wall cloud

01:18here. We're about, I'd say, three or four miles to the north of this looking south. And again,

01:23this is kind of hilly terrain, so we don't have a total view. But you can see the, you can really

01:28see the motion in these clouds. You can just see the inflow pulling in here. This, from the right

01:33side of your screen to the left there, as this gets into that wall cloud area. Again, a large

01:36tornado underneath that right now. But this is ongoing. Like I said, you've got a tornado

01:41emergency. We have got confirmed tornado. This, again, is going to affect the areas to the north

01:46of Harlan to the, I'd say, Panama. You're probably in it very close to it. Eerling is certainly

01:51another city I would certainly be really concerned about right now. But yeah, this is it, guys. I mean,

01:57you're looking at this live. This has been a, just an incredible day, an insane day, a day we were

02:01hoping we were not going to see. And then here you are looking at another one of these large,

02:05potentially violent tornadoes as it is making its way just to the north of, north and northwest of

02:11Harlan, Iowa. Oh man, that is a big tornado, you guys. This is a serious situation. Again, Panama,

02:18Eerling, eventually up toward the Manila area. These are areas you're going to absolutely

02:23want to make sure you are taking shelter. Again, if you were watching us on the AccuWeather Network

02:27from Panama, Eerling, Defiance, Astor, Manila, any of these places, you are in the path of this

02:35storm. We have a confirmed tornado. You are seeing this. Again, I mean, you can't, you can't ask for

02:40a better view. You see the motion on this. This is intense motion, guys. This is a very, very,

02:45very strong tornado that is coming. Again, several smaller cities in this path of this.

02:50Again, I'm going to name these off again. Panama, Eerling, Defiance, Astor, Manila, Iowa. If you

02:55guys are in the path of this storm, take shelter now. Confirmed large and extremely dangerous

03:01tornado on the ground as we speak. You are seeing this live again here on the AccuWeather Network,

03:06folks. This is a big one. And Tony, all of the radar data backs up what you're saying. In fact,

03:11there is a very significant, one of the most pronounced correlation coefficient dropouts I've

03:16seen in a while on this one within the core of this storm. And again, it's almost like a cartoon

03:23like hook that we often see with supercells that are producing tornadoes that are large and

03:27dangerous. And again, the radial velocity imagery is through the roof again, too, with very strong

03:35couplet, obviously. I wanted to mention the correlation coefficient. So this is a product

03:40that shows if the radar data is bouncing off of stuff that's all the same size and shape or not.

03:46And you can see where it's raining, we have a very high value there in that pink or magenta where you

03:51have some hail and rain together. There's a little bit of a slight reduction, but look at this. You

03:57can see that blue dot. This is a very significant mix of different things that the radar data is

04:03bouncing off of and continues to strike. And again, the radar pulses are bouncing off of

04:10things of different sizes and shapes. What's that mean? We're looking at debris, maybe

04:14crop stuff, or it could be vegetation. It could be housing materials or timber or anything that's

04:21lofted up into the atmosphere. So if we still have Tony's scene there, this is just an amazing

04:26bit of footage that he's capturing. And this storm has been tracking across a long zone here.

04:34This consistent area of rotation has tracked about 70 miles or so, 75 miles. So we are going to be

04:40dealing with multiple long-track tornadoes with the tail of the tape here after today. But you

04:45are looking at this confirmed tornado moving through the area of Shelby County, Iowa. Just

04:50amazing scenes here from Tony. This is live right now on the AccuWeather Network. And Tony Lawback,

04:57are there many people around you, many other chasers?

05:03Actually, Jeff, they're not a lot. I know we've talked to some friends who were down in the

05:06Lincoln area. A lot of them got caught up from the north. We took a long way around to get north

05:10of these storms. This has kind of lost some of its condensation. Again, you're watching this live

05:14right now. Clearly still on the ground. There's a lot of motion with this, but definitely is not

05:18as thick and bulky as it was just moments ago. But this thing, again, I think it's going to cross

05:24very close to where we are right now. I think it's just going to pass just to our south. We

05:28always talk about if you have a tornado coming at you, if it's not moving left or right, it's

05:31getting bigger. It's coming directly at you. This has got just a little bit of leftward motion here.

05:37We had a little bit of hail falling, possibly up to maybe a golf ball size here. But yeah,

05:41you really see it starting to pick back up here on the ground. Yeah, this has just been an

05:45incredible day, Jeff. Like I said, you're watching this live right now. And this is, again, going to

05:49be just to the south of Yearling and Defiance here. This tornado continues ongoing right now.

05:55Some very large hail falling, possibly upwards of two inches in diameter now on top of our location.

06:01And Tony, this is just amazing footage here. How far south are you

06:06compared to Yearling? Are you in Yearling or south or east of there at all?

06:12So we're on Highway 59. I'd say we're about a handful of miles south of Defiance,

06:16Iowa right now. So Defiance, I'd say, is just a few miles to our north. And again, like I said,

06:22I think this tornado is certainly coming in our direction. This is a large tornado, like I said,

06:30not fully condensed. You could see kind of the left edge of it's more condensed than the other,

06:34but you see just that big merry-go-round of clouds under that. That is a tornado,

06:40like just the size of it, the width of it. This is a very large tornado.

06:43And I know that you dropped into this one from another cell that was on the north side.

06:47And despite looking at this from north to south, you're getting a really good view. So the

06:52intensity of the rain and the hail is not really obscuring your view all that badly.

06:59No, in fact, this is best view we've had of a tornado all day. Most of ours have been pretty

07:02buried in the rain. In fact, we just, we talked about going into Soldier on the last hit. We got

07:07a tornado in there, a pretty heavily rain-wrapped tornado out of that one. That video we're trying

07:11to get up, cell phone service today has just been absolutely horrendous. But, you know, we've

07:16seen this, I think, is our fourth tornado, certainly our fifth tornado intercept. But look

07:20at the motion in that, Jeff. That's just unbelievable. You see a cell phone tower

07:24there in the foreground. We're kind of using that as a guide. Yeah, it's a good point of

07:28reference. At least it is moving right to left for you. And, well, this is great work here,

07:34Tony. Thank you for being on this. And, you know, we do have a break coming up in about 30 seconds,

07:39but we'll certainly come back to you in a few minutes to see what you are continuing to capture

07:45there live here on the AccuWeather Network. A tornado emergency continues in Shelby County,

07:50Iowa. So we're a county or two east of the Missouri River. We're about, just for your

07:56reference, about 40 miles northeast of Omaha, Nebraska, but we're on the Iowa side. A tornado

08:01emergency in progress in Shelby County, Iowa. That's meteorologist and storm chaser Tony

08:05Laubach's camera lens live. He's there with Ed Grubb in western Iowa. Stay with

08:10us here on the AccuWeather Network.

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