go to cnn.com/violentearth. i'm liev schreiber. thanks for watching. good night. >> please go to cnn.com, violent earth. >> i'm liev schreiber thanks for watching. goodnight it's hard to imagine the power of mother nature. >> what's even if you're in a shelter, even if you're exactly where you're supposed to be during a tornado for those 123 minutes. win everything is falling apart around you. it's chaos my god back out and you're just at the mercy of mother nature really is a terrifying experience to go through right and back welcome to violent earth. i'm liev schreiber 2023 set an all-time record for weather and climate related disasters in the us 28 events with losses over $1 billion wildfires hurricanes, and floods are more frequent than ever the earth is changing tonight. >> we delve into one of the most powerful natural hazards in the world tornadoes terrifying vortexes on leave from thunderstorms that can cause unimaginable destruction few examples of their power are more definitive than the 2011 twister that hit joplin, missouri categorized as an ef5, the highest level possible maximum winds over 200 miles per hour tornado cut right through the center of the city oh, my god oh, my gosh late may is the bullseye in the midwest for tornadoes joplin was under a risk of a tornado, but not a great risk. that is a tornado. people, there was a complex of storms that came toward the city why the tornado formed? just outside of the joplin city limits and then it just started racing in the job one once you're going off on my computer, hurricanes just straight through the heart of joplin, missouri gosh, that is a monster tornado. >> i couldn't really see anything because it was obscured by rain it was rain, rain i think that's why so many people died they did not realize that what they were seeing was the tornado in this case, an ef5 tornado that is catastrophic and by the time they did it's too late as 20 went by, everything was gone. it was like a bulldozer. level everything in its path i just couldn't believe what i was seeing that millions and millions of pieces of debris the tornado was on the ground for 32 minutes. designs arguing it hits them convenience store on east 20th street they had locked it just so the door wouldn't fling open. >> listen to the audio those are 20 entered the center part of the city that they hit the high school. >> and that's with a max damage occurred that aliens video from the high school is no more than 100 yards from amber manson's house in 2011, amber was 40-years-old amber's always been amber just always generous, kind, and hospitable and just fun to be around nima was home that afternoon she wasn't aware that the tornado was coming. >> she didn't never tv on and no indicators that it was going to be that severe i had spoken to her she said, oh, it's just turned really dark here and then she said now, the sirens are going off. >> and that's a nice say go take the quilt off the top of your bed and getting your bathtub. i said and then call me back very few houses in joplin particularly in the path of what turned out to be this tornado, had basements so the best place to go is either a closet or in your bathtub you want to get as low as you can put as many walls between you and the tornado was possible oh, gosh, i was concerned when she said the sirens were going off. >> i wouldn't even imagine the magnitude of witnesses going to come amber monson probably 15 seconds before the tornado hit realized just how bad it was going to be and bang the tornado here for tornadoes to form. >> you have to have a certain set of ingredients first of all, you have to have moisture available for thunderstorms to develop. you have to have a source of lift or a trigger those thunderstorms to get going you have to have unstable air, which is temperatures that get colder with height and that allows the thunderstorm to rise and develop vertically the most important ingredient is you have to have wind shear, which is changing of wind direction with height and also changing wind speeds with height there's all sorts of different shapes fernandez can take we have a stove pipe which is kind of like a straight up and down type tornado. we have obviously a cone that makes sense since it's a cone shape. another one is the wedge, and that's usually the most intense different tornadoes have different smells when a tornado is going through a densely wooded area, you can smell fresh cup would the frehse combine whatever the tree is the typical widths or anywhere from probably 25 to 50 dr. >> it's across on the low end two on the high end mile wide the largest one i've ever seen well, as the el reno, oklahoma tornado and that was over two miles wide the joplin, 20 caitlin, mile-wide wedge right on the edge of town the tornado was massive. >> it was chewing up everything in its path who's no mercy at all thursday night my from midland the most anticipated moment of this election. biden not try and run 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here at cnn, joplin, missouri, suffering the devastation right now, but very powerful tornado amber lived in what i would call a very middle-class area of joplin these beautiful coin. so division and now it's leveled it was just total devastation are phone ring and it was her and she was screaming, mother and my house is on top of me that's when i said amber it's not funny because we would always good back-and-forth. >> but she said no mom, my house is on top then her vomer did so there's a lot of myths that have been passed down through the years. doors and windows on the north and east sides were open whenever i was growing up, i heard you got to open up the windows to equalize the air pressure. we'll pressure is not what will cause damage to a halt we end getting up under the blowing of roof off another big misconception is it? >> if you're out in a vehicle that an overpass is a great place to take shelter that is not a good place to go. scientists of realized that being in that overpass creates a bit of a wind tunnel effect that the wind is blowing through a smaller area so it can actually accelerate the wind speeds. so you're putting yourself in greater danger there's a really popular misconception that mobile homes are like tornado attractors. >> and what's behind that is undoubtedly that people hear about mobile homes getting hit more because that's where people die roughly half of the deaths in tornadoes occur in mobile and manufacture homes they're much more vulnerable to tornado and tend to turn into debris quicker there are myths that tornadoes can't cross bodies of water oh, tornadoes can go through cities but there are no rules when it comes to 20 those they go where they want to go the deadliest tornado in us history is march 18, 1925. the tri-state tornado that went across southeastern missouri, southern illinois, in the southwestern indiana and it killed 695 people over about a two-and-a-half-hour long period. >> generally, after a tri-state tornado, we see like a tenfold decrease in the fatality rate from tornadoes as compared to 1925 we think there are a lot of things that could be going on behind that. >> there is the emergence of radio and people downstream could hear about it immediately. radar has had something to do with this, increases in our understanding of storms and now the ability to push warnings to people on their cell phones but the may 22, 2011 20 or the joplin, missouri was the deadliest tornado in decades in the united states the net being the seventh deadliest in us history on that day. it didn't matter what type of forecasting skills you had, what technology the tornado one everything basically is a three-foot forfeit pile debris everywhere. stores your eye could see just debris everywhere there's really nothing standing he didn't neighborhood there were 16 people that very geoff petroski sees a lady who is hysterical, has no idea what has happened to her and that's amber munson you could hear amber before you saw her. that's what i remember more than anything is hearing her cries out in coming towards us jeff jumped out of the car immediately and raced towards her hello. hello how did she survive once a tornado sirens went off and the light started flickering. i grabbed a pill and a blanket and my phone and i jumped into the bathtub i decided to roll over on my right side and i kinda got into a fetal position and covered myself up. but as the pressure started coming, the baths started bouncing. so it was very minor at first, not realizing that you're going to get sucked out of your house after the tornado hit. >> i remember hearing the glass shatter, but i don't remember flying in the tornado amber munson when it's flying ended up in someone else's yard when i woke up, i just remember being upside down, buried within the rubble i knew i was alive, but i still question whether or not it was going to survive because of the stuff that was falling on me. >> i think just wanting to survive kicked in for her i kinda wiggled myself out so that i could get up and that's when i got out of the whole i had twisted my knee and i had a puncture wound in my bag but she's alive. >> it was a miracle. >> the joplin tornado, having lived through it made me realize that people don't take them serious enough. you see people that go stand on the front porch wanting to capture these things not realizing how risky they really can be oh my god. historically the soviet union killed traders i started to run two kgb cars, had come behind. i didn't know what to do secrets and spies. a nuclear game tomorrow at ten on cnn i'm getting vaccinated pfizer's pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine because i'm at risk for pneumococcal pneumonia i already gotten pneumonia vaccine, but i'm asking about the added protection of krever, not 20. >> if you're 19 or older with certain chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, copd, or heart disease, or are 65 or older, you are at increased risk for 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wagmeister in los angeles in this closed captioning brought to you by gilt visit gilt.com today for up to 70% off designer brands, it has the designers that get your heart racing had inside a prices, new every day, hurry. >> there'll be gone in a flash designer sales at up to 70% or so of gilt.com today for chasing has gotten extremely popular over the past couple of decades desk put it people do it in large part for the thrill and for the excitement of seeing the event number to the original tornado is still on the ground. >> once you get out here, we see a storm in the open plains and amazing structure that has its mesmerizing and it can become even addicting my goodness that was a thing of beauty and violence there's a side to it that's almost like a hunter because you're trying to narrow down where in the country this relatively rare phenomenon is going to take please now thousands of people who do this. there's even two we're groups nowadays and you can get into a van and go with the group of fellow enthusiasts and drive out on the plains and see the majestic skies in united states, we average more than 1,200 tornadoes per year. that is number one in the world by a long shot the second closest is canada, which only gets 100 per year. you can actually add canada, australia, and all european countries combined. and we he still see more than they do tornadoes are most common in the midwest we also have another area that's really prone to tornadoes in our southeastern states the tornado season depends on where you are in the country, in the plains. >> tornado season there's typically over a relatively short period of time in the spring time in the southeastern united states, tornadoes are more likely to occur at anytime of the year it was actually, can and do strike all over the country tornadoes have been known to be in every state of the us, they have met in the highest of mountains, beaches, and offshore over the last 50 years. >> what we've seen, it's been an increase in the number of tornadoes in will be think of this mid south. it looks like it's associated with physical changes in the atmosphere, but we don't have a real underlying reason of why that's occurred a rare sight in the skies over japan, a powerful twist ripping across the eastern part of the nation. tornadoes occur worldwide. >> your past 20 south america has 20 ells, australia, japan, but the united states has a unique combination of geographical features that can lend itself to a lot of tornadoes. the gulf of mexico that provides the very warm, humid air. then you also get cooler, drier air that's coming down from canada or off the rockies there's really no other place in the world that has the exact combination of ingredients, like we do here in the united states storm chasing has definitely evolved into this kind of social media era. where are we northeast and people want to be seen? >> they want to be the chaser that everybody thinks of doing. the live streams posts in front of a tornado and whatnot storm chasing is a double-edged sword it's very valuable when it comes to learning more about the science behind storms but it can also be dangerous if you're not 100% sure of what you're doing the biggest danger of strong jason has always been the driving you tend to judge where the tornado is going. but that doesn't always group there's so many people who chased now in some storms. >> the traffic is actually a serious problem. >> what i'm chasing out and the planes i'm have to see dozens of other chasers want to begin storm chasing. there were no other chasers david hardly whether he likes it or not, is the father of modern day storm chasing david wholly as the first person to truly go out and seek tornadoes driving long distances, attempting to come up with some sort of formula to see tornadoes he holds the record for the longest consecutive years of storm chase i've been storm chasing 66 years and i've seen 265 tornadoes so my first tornado in 1958, i think this is one of the things that appeal to me. it was the element of mystery. of what causes these storms. there was so much it was unknown 2023, i saw david hold layout chasing man's 85-years-old. he's been doing it for most of his life and he's still out there doing it every single year it's, not like spelunking or surf boarding you can return the ocean, you could climb the mountains again and again again but that one tornado, that one storm once it's gone, it's out. its history to have a picture of it, have a video or anything else of it? >> is to say that i've captured something that will never happen again thursday night live from atlanta. >> the most anticipated moment of this election biden, made america isn't future because that's where we are a nation of possibilities. >> trump. >> we had the best economy we had the best border, we had the best of everything, but now we get to do it all over again. we're gonna do it even better. two very different visions for america. >> one unprecedented night moderate