With multiple rounds of storms in the forecast on May 5, heavy rain led to major street flooding in places like Odessa.
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00:00Our live coverage begins this hour once again with Tony Laubach. He joins us live from near
00:04Andrews in Texas. And Tony, earlier you were in Midland and Odessa, so you've traveled a little
00:08bit to the north. Give us an update on what you're seeing. All right, well, we're kind of splitting
00:15right now between two different severe cells. We talked about that one last hour that was moving
00:20through the Odessa area. That one bringing some pretty good rains to the city. We're tracking
00:25another one off to the northwest, but we'll start you off with scenes out of Odessa. This storm was
00:29not in the neighborhood for very long, but it was dropping copious amounts of rain. One thing I did
00:34notice and immediately coming in behind this storm wasn't much, if any, hail on the ground. So a lot
00:40of the radar echoes likely just coming from the torrential downpours that were able to flood
00:45streets in just minutes. So it gives you an idea of how heavy the rain was in that storm. You see
00:49some of the sites of vehicles driving through some of this water. It was moving pretty good. A lot of
00:53it just flowing down the streets in some areas. So a lot of the streets, especially on the north side
00:58of Odessa, certainly looking a little bit more like rivers than they were streets. We'll go ahead
01:04and take you off the radar here because we're kind of going to give you a show you what we're looking
01:08at. Obviously, we're talking about the storm right now that is over the Odessa area. That continues
01:12to be severe worn. But if you look off to the north and west here, just to the west of Andrews,
01:16where I'm at, that is another cell that we're tracking. Both of these right now, I would say,
01:21are minimal tornado threats. I think both of these we talked about last hour on the north side
01:26of that outflow boundary, which is finally just starting to stall there south of the interstate,
01:30south of Midland, Odessa. So these storms likely going to be hailers for sure. The one to the
01:36northwest is the one I'm currently tracking here. And if you bring me back live, I've switched the
01:40view over my shoulder and you can kind of see the edge of that updraft from that storm. That one's
01:45got a pretty hefty core out of the two storms in the area. That's certainly the one I think that's
01:50the most severe looking, certainly worn for bigger hail. We do have one and a half inch hail on the last
01:55warning I read just a few minutes ago. Would not shock me if we see bigger hail or just a lot, just
02:01like accumulating hail. We can sometimes get that here on the high plains where the storms might be
02:06warned for big, large hail. And then you get up under them and it's just a lot of small hail, but it's
02:11piled up six, seven inches deep. So that's going to be one thing I'm going to be watching here with this
02:16storm in the near term. We are under a tornado watch until nine o'clock here. That goes from southeast New
02:21Mexico down in through the Midland Odessa area. So conditions do still warrant the potential for
02:26tornadoes. And I do think we will see an uptick in that. This is only going to be the first round
02:31of storms that we're going to be tracking here tonight. Damon expecting more supercell development
02:35probably in the next couple of hours. That's going to bring the second round. And again, those storms
02:40certainly could be tornadic as well. Right now, damaging winds and very large hail are going to be the
02:44primary threats. These storms will linger into the overnight hours and become part of the mess that we're
02:49expecting on the other side of the state tomorrow. All right, Tony, real quick, give me an update on what
02:54you're seeing as far as the inbound winds to that storm just to the west of Andrews. What is the humidity and
02:58what's the temperature like for those winds? Well, you know, you hear the wind, it's blowing in my face right now
03:06and it is being pulled into that storm. I would say we're probably gusting 30 to 40 at times and some of the
03:11higher gusts, but it's cool here at the surface, a little bit cooler than than you would normally see with a
03:18tornadic storm. So I think these storms, Damien, are just slightly elevated, which is why I'm more
03:22concerned with hail in the near term. We'll see how the tornado threat evolves later this evening.
03:27All right, Tony Lallbach reporting for us from Andrews County in West Texas. Thank you so much
03:31for that update. We'll continue to check in with you here coming up. Let's go and show you the broad
03:36view here on radar of what Tony was talking about. So Tony is in Andrews right there, which is in the
03:40middle of your screen. He was primarily, the storm behind him was that storm there up to the north and up to the
03:46west. So he was looking at this storm over his shoulder, but we now have a brand new severe
03:51thunderstorm warning for this storm that's north of Midland. So we will be watching out for multiple
03:55severe thunderstorm warning storms here as we go forward. But overall, one thing I want to point
03:59out is that for this storm moving between Martin and Midland County right there, that one was just
04:04reissued. But yes, the storm that Tony was talking about has more of a hail core associated with this.
04:10So that one's going to be one that's going to be producing some pretty good size hail.