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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 watching the arklatex. for the tornadoes to form. widespread of severe weather all the way to north o...

That's 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 didn't 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 have texas task force one being deployed. that's an 84-member team, 71st responders, search and res...

Least. >> let's talk about the mechanics of a tornado. we see something this massive, this powerful, what are the factors that cause this? >> i'd say about 99% of our tornados are weaker tornados. they're what we call ef-0s or ef-1s, can maybe damage trees, do a little damage to a roof, but they don't 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, that's how you can get these. it's very rare, i mean, the equations in the atmosphere, the equilibrium that has to be maintained...

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 can't measure winds directly in tornadoes, they happen so quickly. it's on such a localized scale, you can't get a direct measurement. you have to look at the damage to estimate the wind speeds. when you look at the pictures, video of what's coming coming out of moore, tough to imagine anything worse than what we have seen occur there. >> certainly is. jim dickey, thank you, at accuweather. we appreciate it. >> mike boettcher lives not far from one o...

That storm surges are hitting with greater ferocity, witness sandy and the destruction last year. it isn't that we're seeing more ef-4s. there's no scientific evidence that we're 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. >> that's paul douglas of weather nation tv making a clear point. let's be clear about what the sign says. there's no reason to believe there's a frequency in the severity of other weather related disasters.