When a tornado warning is your wake-up call
Sunday, May 25, 2014, 10:13 AM - It started with thunder and lightning, and they'd only been asleep for a scant couple of hours.
Storm Hunters Jaclyn Whittal and Mark Robinson had turned in for the night in their hotel in Midland, Texas, after a day of chasing, but while they were done with the storms, it seemed the storms weren't done with them.
Any severe thunderstorm is capable of producing a tornado if conditions are right, and a few hours later, it looked like these storms were on the verge of delivering.
8:16 am local time -We are under a Tornado warning right now just woke up inhotel room.Ready to take cover if needed pic.twitter.com/NtyDr74n3a— Jaclyn Whittal (@jwhittalTWN) May 25, 2014
K my bad- Tornado warned cell is south of us. Not where our hotel is... Whew. Time to get ready to chase. #stormhunters— Jaclyn Whittal (@jwhittalTWN) May 25, 2014
Although that warned storm wasn't nearby, both Midland and nearby Odessa were under a flash flood warning, as were several other communities. Flash flood watches covered almost half of western Texas.
We sent Mark, Jaclyn and cameraman Michel Millaire to the United States for a few weeks of storm chasing.
Yesterday was a promising day, and they reported a handful of tornado warnings in the area, but none produced a tornado that was observed by storm chasers.
But that doesn't at all mean the storms weren't rough, as you could see in the video below.
"We did see beautiful structure and hail cores," Jaclyn says. "We got hit with some heavy rain and there were flash flood warnings in place where we were."
Today, after that fortuitous wake-up, they're back on the road in West Texas for another round.
TUNE IN: We'll have regular updates from Jaclyn and Mark on TV. Watch the video below for a recap of the previous week of storm chasing.