Flooding we have going on. adam? yeah, mike. we are on counsel road. almost where you get into the outlet mall is here and flooding is right up this portion of counsel is, at some point, at least a foot. but at other points three to four. depending on where you are. one to three feet. couple cars stuck and they simply cannot get through this area. there are several businesses around here. and flooding is a problem at i-40 and counsel road. so certainly avoid this area completely. appreciate that, adam. flash flood warnings in effect for oklahoma and canadian county as well as cleveland county. serious flooding situation. rain continues to come down along with large hail. biggest hail is in the south
Along i-240, between i-35 as it moves through that area. george, in terms your location right now on i-40 east, what can you tell us about the condition on the roadwayroadway are around in that area? reporter: traffic is quite heavy east and westbound on i-40 from about shaufta east to shawnee. a lot of people trying to leave the oklahoma city area as the tornadic storms were moving through. it is starting to thin out, but traffic is heavy east and westbound. the only two confirmed fatalities that we have heard reported from kfor confirmed by oklahoma highway patrol happened on interstate 40, a woman and her infant child killed in a car that got caught up in the storm. are you seeing debris or have you seen overturned vehicles out
Afternoon. make sure their families are safe and get into their safe area. conditions were really gathering and taking shape to be very severe. unfortunately, there were two sporting events. minor league baseball game and minor league play off hockey game, that were not cancelled. so people coming down, going to the restaurants down here. those are the people that had to pile in. they did get early warning. sirens have been pounding continuously. the hotel we were in, the downtown convention center and arena were two public shelters, and everyone was ushered into shelters early in the process. there was a lot of warning. this area is familiar with tornadoes and understands how severe they can be. not familiar with two major tornadoes striking areas that
Tennis ball to softball sized hail also reported along with torrential downpours. i watched this develop a couple hours ago. slowly watched it trek across interstate 40 and going from a rural area storm to a much much more urban area and hearing that oklahoma city itself was evacuated and hotels and airport with everyone going under ground, that is what local meteorologists are advising. they are just saying, you have to get under ground. it is not safe enough with storms this big to just be in an interior room or bathroom. underground is the safest place to be at there moment. dylan, in terms of people watching nationally and warnings under effect, we should say it is 9:04 p.m. on the east coast. 8:04 local time in oklahoma city. you will hear us give times on the air that are specific to anybody who might be in harms way in this central oklahoma storm system.
Stella area, east of draper lake. begin lakes. dale shawnee, you folks stay alert there. tornado warning for padawamy county. it is tracking towards shawnee obu. so padawanamy county. let s go to mark dillard with an update. yes. mike, still watching for power, due west now on 36. heading south trying to get highway 9 before we can at least get access to look at this thing without having to bail on it so fast. winds are just crazy, michael. give me one second while i get to the intersection here. all right. let s go to adam about the bad
Visibility. but no power flashes. that means not anything on the ground. right now, i don t see power flashes. that would be the only indicator. was that a power flash or lightning? mike bennett talking about circulation on the northern side of shawnee. mike, would you verifier center of rotation is near shawnee near i-40? hard for us to figure out, mike. one thing we had a hard time getting bearings on the storm since we been here because of that. it s, i don t know, mike. it is hard for us to identify any area of this rotation, we lose the visibility. that s mike bennett, who is fine. mike bettes car was crushed earlier by the tornado, he is
Tornado on the ground. just super dark. i can t see, but it is so dark in there, and just north, that s not the rain any more. part of it is rain but as soon as the last power hit, it would be like indian hills is began as far as power. and completely blacked out. we can see a definite lowering of the cloud right now. it appears it is just a few miles, two or three miles from the coastal training center on highway nine. but we are seeing tons of power flashes in the same area. if it is tornado it stalled out and just sitting there ripping and grinding. so if you are still in this area, definitely stay, stay in your shelter. stay in your shelter, my wife asked a minute ago if we could get out. no, no, stay put. stay put. if you are listening on the radio, watch us on tv, stay there, stay under ground, stay
Situation, especially in urban areas around oklahoma city, so they were hit with the tornadoes earlier and they ve had up to six inches, seven inches of rainfall. whenever you do that in an urban area, you have problems because traffic can get stranded, you can have flooding. we may see transition of tornado threat to flooding threat overnight. the wind threat will continue east into tulsa, missouri, northwest arkansas overnight tonight. we are not out of the woods yet. greg carbon from noaa in norman, oklahoma, thank you for joining us. i am glad you have the job you have. please stay safe. thank you. thank you. in terms of what happened tonight in oklahoma city in terms of the damage reports, it is unclear at this point the extent of the damage. we have two confirmed fatalities in the oklahoma city area, oklahoma highway patrol confirming two fatalities on interstate 40. eyewitness reports of a lot of cars overturned and a lot of
And these storms have this history of producing tornadoes as we ve seen. unfortunately, they are under this threat for several more hours. msnbc meteorologist dylan dreyer, i know we will check back with you. i appreciate it. we are going now to kfor in oklahoma city. though cover these severe storms with incredible knowledge and detail. there is no better coveragefully where in the country than what kfor is doing right now. let s go to them. bank statement from the el reno area floating into luther. that s canadian county all the way to the east side. that s quite a ways. east side of oklahoma county. we are hearing about things we have no doubt we will get serious damage reports coming in a little bit later. right now we are trying to track where this thing is going and to get folks out of the way of that. we have crews looking for damage and injuries as well. we have been talking about power poles you have hard about that, seeing pictures. we have 40,000 metro residents
And this is an unofficial report, rachel. but we had some significant roads and part of interstate by ways, not to mention interstates are under way. some major thoroughfares, making getting through very difficult. i expect to receive, we just have initial reports right rey ordonez right / now and sirens are going off.and sirens are go. do you expect that to affect rescue plans or emergency responders to get where they need to get to. it certainly will. you had a guest a moment ago at will rogers world airport. our major airport at oklahoma city. that where the storm headed. there were touch downs around the area, not exactly at the airport but one of the major junctions, the amarillo