Page 2 - Ef 4s News Today

When you see that you can get a tornado to spin up as winds tilt. as far as what we are expecting afternoon hours, tuesday. the atmosphere sort of refires, reloads and refires. still the same -- all of the same ingredients in place. drier air moving out of the deserts. cool air mass in the upper midwest, the northern plains, moving south. deep moisture drawn in. those three come together, we see storms. and energy overhead, we can get the storms to rotate and that can bring the tornado. we are w...

Thats what we do best. >> reporter: in an area that needs warning, the chasers are doing what they can to save lives. ginger zee, abc news, moore, oklahoma. >> so at this point when you say they need a warning, the warnings didnt come fast enough. there are sirens and people tried to head to the right places. >> 16 minutes. >> 16 minutes is not enough to get anywhere when you look at the devastation. the question now is what happens next? next a lot of resources headed into moore, oklahoma. we h...

Least. >> lets talk about the mechanics of a tornado. we see something this massive, this powerful, what are the factors that cause this? >> id say about 99% of our tornados are weaker tornados. theyre what we call ef-0s or ef-1s, can maybe damage trees, do a little damage to a roof, but they dont devastate property. when you get a storm like this, the tornado itself is just spinning so much faster and sucking up so much more energy from the atmosphere around it, thats how you can get these. its...

Does with these storm surveys, they go out, look at the damage that occurred. they have a set of rules to look at to indicate the wind speed. you cant measure winds directly in tornadoes, they happen so quickly. its on such a localized scale, you cant get a direct measurement. you have to look at the damage to estimate the wind speeds. when you look at the pictures, video of whats coming coming out of moore, tough to imagine anything worse than what we have seen occur there. >> certainly is. jim...

That storm surges are hitting with greater ferocity, witness sandy and the destruction last year. it isnt that were seeing more ef-4s. theres no scientific evidence that were seeing an up tick in these extreme tornadoes. less than 2% is ef-4s or 5s. what is happening is urban sprawl. just the probability of a tragedy like this goes up. >> thats paul douglas of weather nation tv making a clear point. lets be clear about what the sign says. theres no reason to believe theres a frequency in the sev...

dozens of people were hurt. hundreds of homes were damaged, and destroyed. a live report in a hard-hit town in oklahoma is just ahead. but here is how one survivor in iowa described the storm. >> you know, it was no straight wind, it was a regular twister. the wind was just blasting out. the bathroom, like they always say, and while we got here, the roof went here. the good lord was with us. he sure was. its about more than you can bear. >> were glad larry hill is okay. the u.s. coast ...

It seems like this is getting worse. am i right to think that or from a meteorological point of view is this kind of what happens every few years? >> reporter: well, we always expect this clash of air masses in spring and as the warm air wants to overtaken the cold air of winter. but this has been highly unusual. earlier in the broadcast we were talking about the number of ef-4s. since weve been keeping records since 1800s of storms and weather in this country, the number or the percentage of ef...

>> reporter: well, we always expect this clash of air masses in spring and as the warm air wants to overtaken the cold air of winter. but this has been highly unusual. earlier in the broadcast we were talking about the number of ef-4s. since weve been keeping records since 1800s of storms and weather in this country, the number or the percentage of ef-4 tornadoes is about 1% of all tornadoes and now here just within about two weeks of each other, we have ef-4s and ef-5s that are miles wide and l...

From that damaged area. period. thats all i have to say on that one. thats all i got. right now a couple storms coming into kansas city from the west. 40, 60 miles per hour. also into parts of west virginia, kentucky, tennessee. the big story, though, will be parts of oklahoma and texas. look at this map. i will show you the severe threat. it is big. it is important. and these tornadoes will be huge today. kansas city, all the way back down west of oklahoma city, down to dallas, texas, little ...

Full alert especially tomorrow evening as the storms come out of central oklahoma and central kansas and move toward southwest missouri later early evening and late afternoon and be on guard because tomorrow will be long track tornadoes and maybe significant tornadoes as well. >> jeff, what were hearing is that this is already statistically the 11th worst tornado season that america has seen in recorded history. obviously its not over yet and it could rise up that ladder quite sharply and quite ...