Thunder roars as bands of Hurricane Idalia start arriving in Florida
AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live amid booming thunder, cracks of lightning and pouring rain in Lake City, Florida, on the night of Aug. 29.
Transcript
00:00 Okay, Accuweather meteorologist Tony Laubach continues our team coverage tonight.
00:04 He joins us now from Lake City, Florida, which is about 50 miles inland from Florida's Nature
00:10 Coast or the Big Bend, where preparations are underway ahead of landfall. Tony?
00:14 Yeah, well, preparations are taking a backseat right now. You kind of see behind me,
00:21 we're doing this selfie style here in Lake City because just as our hit was rolling in,
00:26 so did this storm. And our producer will tell you here over the last several minutes as I've been
00:30 kind of waiting to get on air here, some of the loud thunder, you see the lighting behind me. So
00:34 I'm under the awning here of the hotel, just kind of broke everything down. So we're kind of doing
00:39 this free will in here, but I want to show you some of the rain behind me. This was coming down
00:42 a lot harder just moments ago. These are some of the outer bands of the hurricane that we, I've
00:48 seen the National Weather Service prompt a tornado watch. We actually have a tornado watch for most
00:53 of the coast, the Gulf side of Florida, till six o'clock in the morning. It's for storms like these
00:58 that we're going to have some serious concerns with as we go through the overnight hours. This
01:02 storm, last I checked, was not severe. We have seen some gusts kind of approaching 35 to 40 miles per
01:09 hour with this heavy, heavy rain and of course excessive lightning. This actually has a special
01:14 weather statement where they talk about this having excessive cloud to ground lightning,
01:19 which is why I'm under a shelter right now, not really doing this traditional style here. But
01:23 we'll take you back. This is looking in the parking lot. You are looking right now to the north.
01:27 This storm is moving quickly off to the north and east. So a lot of the closer lightning, well I
01:32 should have had it turned this way because that one just came down pretty good, but a lot of the
01:35 closer lightning has started to move a little bit off to our north. But you can hear, you hear that
01:41 thunder coming out of here. This is a very electric storm. Typically when we talk about hurricanes,
01:46 Kevin, we don't really talk much about the way of lightning. That was a great shot there behind
01:50 me over my shoulder. But these outer bands, the instability that we've got, you're going to see
01:55 the lightning, you're going to hear the thunder. It's going to be a noisy night. Again, tornado
01:59 watch until 6 a.m. That's just one of the many facets of the issues that we are going to see
02:05 with this hurricane. That's going to be the overnight threat and that's going to keep a
02:08 lot of us busy overnight even before we start to worry about landfall in the morning, Kevin. So
02:13 it's going to be a noisy night for us here in Lake City, Florida. You got it, Tony. Thanks for that
02:18 report. Stay safe. We appreciate it. The worst is yet to come, but when you have a strong thunderstorm
02:23 rolling through, that's pretty bad too and dangerous as well. Tony Laubach reporting for us
02:28 there, which is, that's in an area of north Florida, right about here, about 50 miles inland
02:34 from Florida's Big Bend. And we just saw on the radar those storms going right through, right
02:39 through that region. But boy, the main event is yet to come, Michelle. Kevin, I mean, look,
02:43 you can even see it in this mode of looking at the storm that now you're starting to get a defined
02:49 eye and with all that thunder and lightning here, if we were to throw the lightning on here,
02:53 that's exactly where you would see a lot of this lightning in the northeastern portion.