Storm chaser Dr. Reed Timmer, reporting from Alford, Florida, updates his travels storm chasing through the southern U.S, which is being pounded by tornado-warned storms on Jan. 9.
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00:00 Reid, good morning. You've had yourself quite the night and quite the day. What have you seen so far?
00:05 Yeah, it's been a wild overnight. I've been on three renegade supercells so far. Those are the
00:12 supercells that fire out ahead of the squall line and they came in off the Gulf of Mexico.
00:16 The first one was in Pensacola and that just had winds up above 80, 90 miles an hour. It
00:21 went tornado warned. I think it produced a tornado over the marshes just to the northeast of Pensacola
00:26 and the next storm I got on making landfall at Santa Rosa Beach and that one knocked out the
00:32 power. I felt a huge surge of wind and then that one went on to produce a tornado that impacted
00:37 Fountain, Florida and there was some damage in that town on the east side of town. Quite a bit
00:41 of damage. Trees down, smaller homes that were flipped as well. I saw a mobile home flipped
00:46 into the east of Fountain and then that other supercell that made landfall down at Panama City
00:51 did some damage as well and then that blocks my path off to the northeast but these storms
00:56 are moving really fast. 50 to 60 miles an hour and the low-level jet out here is faster than I've
01:02 probably seen since the super outbreak of April 27, 2011. Not going to say that's going to happen
01:07 today because the instability is a lot lower but these clouds are just ripping at 70 plus miles
01:13 per hour just above the ground. Almost looks like you could touch the clouds up there and that's the
01:17 low-level wind shear that is creating these tornadoes today. You just saw the power flicker
01:21 out here even. That's just from the low-level jet from these little super showers going by
01:26 mixing down those damaging winds. You know, Reid, I want to talk about you for a second because for
01:30 people who've never seen your work before, your level of dedication is like nothing I've ever
01:35 seen. My friend, have you gone to sleep yet since yesterday since you started chasing these storms?
01:40 I haven't had an opportunity to sleep last night but unfortunately I just I can't fall asleep when
01:46 I'm in an active tornado warning or the warm sector and had to chase all night. The timing of
01:51 this event just happened in the middle of the night which is also the most dangerous because
01:55 a lot of times people are asleep, storms are moving really fast and at least now we have some daylight
02:00 and people are awake to know that the tornado threat's coming to their location. So important,
02:05 you did mention those overnight tornadoes. Look, I lived in the southeast for a time. I lived
02:09 in middle Tennessee and we know all about tornadoes in that part of the country and those
02:13 late night cells, those early morning cells can oftentimes be the most deadly because people are
02:17 asleep. Make sure that everyone's putting on those watches and warnings this morning. Reid,
02:20 I've got to ask you for you, what comes next? Where are you going? I'm going to head northeast
02:26 and stay ahead of this line and look for more development of those renegade supercells and
02:30 then I'll probably cut north of the flash flood threat in upstate South Carolina where there's
02:34 a moderate risk and effect.
02:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]