AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Benjamin, Texas, as multiple severe storms swept through the region.
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00:00More severe weather is expected throughout the rest of the week here across parts of Texas,
00:04and then this will also include Arkansas, Louisiana. Flooding concerns will also be on
00:09the rise, especially, as you can imagine, near that swollen Mississippi River.
00:13All right, well, we want to get down into our live coverage this hour with Tony Lawback,
00:16joining us now from near Benjamin, Texas. Tony, how's it going down there? You've had a heck of
00:22a spring. Yeah, it's been a heck of a spring for sure, and I'll tell you, it's continuing now.
00:28Folks in Benjamin just got absolutely throttled. We saw probably, hard to say, I would say at least
00:34two-inch diameter hail, if not bigger. I think some of the bigger stones were probably just north
00:37of town. This was the same cell responsible for a five-inch diameter hail. One of our chasers
00:43reporting their back windshield getting actually just put a hole, like the stone went straight
00:48through, put a hole in their windshield. So some very violent storms here, primarily hailers. You've
00:53noticed the lack of tornado warnings that we've seen kind of on these cells, just due to the cold
00:58air, the cooler air that has remained on the surface, which has really prevented tornadic
01:02circulation from becoming a big issue. But it has been the hail, the wind-driven hail, which continues
01:07to be an issue. Again, folks here in Benjamin just got done with round one. Fortunately, there's a
01:12second round coming in from the southwest. So unfortunately, what we're seeing now is probably
01:17going to linger just a little bit longer here in the city. I saw a lot of folks slowly making their
01:21way into town from the west, likely having a very rough time of it as they were working their way,
01:26trying to get here into Benjamin. A lot of folks using the gas station for cover, but unfortunately,
01:31the wind-driven hail coming in sideways, very hard to really get shelter from stuff like that.
01:36We're in a safe spot here. We've managed to find ourselves in an area of coverage that's about
01:41three sides covered plus the top. So we were able to ride this out pretty effectively. But again,
01:47we probably had wind-driven hail, maybe up to baseball size. We'll get out here once it's safe to do so and
01:53see if we can't find some of the bigger stones and get an accurate measurement and get that report
01:57into you guys as well as the National Weather Service just to let folks know what this storm
02:00has. Again, I think the worst of the hail, probably not by much, maybe a mile or two just to the north
02:05of Benjamin there along. I would put that as Highway 6, State Highway 6, just on the north side of
02:12Benjamin. Again, if you're looking at radar, you see there are basically three storms we're watching.
02:17The one that's here in Benjamin, then you go southwest just to the north of Knox City,
02:20and they just pumped a tornado warning on for this one. Of course they did.
02:24So we do have the first tornado warning of the day on this particular cell. Again,
02:28that's just gone through the Benjamin area. So our hope is that we can go ahead and get ourselves
02:33east, get ourselves back out in front of this storm, and we'll be able to continue to track this storm
02:38as it continues to push off to the east northeast. So again, folks along Highway 82, this is going to be
02:44kind of, I would assume, north of Seymour. But if you're in Seymour, Texas, certainly be prepared for this one.
02:50Unfortunately, again, you've got the other two cells that are down the line that are going to
02:54also be of issue for you as well. So just because you're not in it yet, again, this tornado warning,
03:00the polygon extends to about Seymour. You guys in Seymour are next in the list here,
03:05so you're going to definitely want to be paying attention.
03:08That's right. We're going to be watching out for this new tornado warning storm there, Tony.
03:11It's going to be going from Knox County into Baylor County, so we'll be watching out for that.
03:16Tony, you gave us an update on how large the hailstones. You've been talking about possible
03:21baseball-sized hailstones with the storm that you're in in particular. What about the quantity
03:28of hailstones? Is it a lot of widespread hail, or is it just some of those little tit-for-tat
03:35kind of sporadic hailstones?
03:38It's a wide range. Like I'm seeing in the grass, there's good coverage, so it was pretty consistent.
03:47It didn't last long here. We're in the hook. We have the hook that came through, so we're in a
03:51much skinnier area as opposed to north of here where they're in the sustained core, the main
03:56brunt. So this was in the hook region. So we basically had about, I'd say, two minutes of pretty
04:01solid hail, but enough to where, again, looking out kind of in the grass out in front of us, Damien,
04:05there's definitely coverage. So I would imagine in the core, just to our north,
04:10is probably pretty intense.
04:12Okay. All right. Tony Laubach, thank you so much for that update. We'll check in with you coming up
04:15because this is now a tornado-worn storm, the first tornado-worn storm here for this particular set
04:20of storms that we've been tracking across parts of the Texas Panhandle into parts of southwest Texas,
04:27or northwest Texas, I should say. Here's a live look now at Tulsa. And yes, this threat of severe
04:31weather here across the southern plains is extending from pretty much, yeah, northeast Oklahoma
04:36and the Tulsa metro all the way down through west Texas. But yeah, we're going to key in here on the
04:40Benjamin area, which is where Tony Laubach is. This is where he was tracking those baseball-sized
04:45hailstones moving in. This is definitely going to be a hail producer, but with as many chasers on this
04:51particular storm as we have, I guess they have a little bit more of an inkling there as far as maybe
04:56somebody saw something to warrant this tornado warning. But as we look at the overall rotation
05:01signature here from Lubbock, let's go and take a look at the Velocity product. And yeah, you can
05:05see that this is a more of a muddied rotation signature compared to what we've been tracking
05:10earlier. But once again, Tony kind of hit the nail on the head here earlier for us whenever he said
05:14that this is just one of multiple storms that we are tracking here across this region. So yes,
05:20you have the tornado-worn storm with the baseball-sized hail that just worked its way across
05:24Benjamin. But we also have this storm that's going to be just to the west of Knox City,
05:28and we have this storm that's going to be just to the north of Aspermont right there. So we have
05:32three distinct separate severe thunderstorms capable of producing baseball-sized hail, and in some cases
05:39even possible producing a tornado warning here as we go forward. So we're going to be watching out for
05:44multiple areas with low to mid-level rotation. It's going to be that mid-level rotation we're primarily
05:49tracking here for the highest potential of producing that devastating, dangerous, and in
05:54this case destructive for the severe thunderstorm warning, destructive hail here looking forward.
05:59Because overall these are going to be some very strong and some very potent storms.