through. this path was 22 miles long. as this formed, right before 3:00 p.m., it was in a nondensely-populated area. then, it went right over new cakastcas castle. as it became massive, it exploded. and the densely-populated is where we saw this thing intensified. we can see now that we re talking about minimum, 160-mile-per-hour winds, potentially as high as 200 miles per hour. we started to see this impressive damage. the catastrophic damage. as the thing started to dissipate is when it started to go, once again, into areas that were not as densely populated. really, the timing is very unfortunate in a path like this. let s take you out wider and talk about this. very common, now, it seems in this area, look at the three tracks that have gone into this area. one of the ones everyone keeps talking about is may 3rd, 1999. one of the biggest differences i
damage there is horrible. i mean, literally, from about half a mile to 3/4 of a mile, from when this developed, it was producing ef-3 damage. 150 to 160-mile-per-hour winds. here, we re thinking 180180 to possibly 200 miles per hour. the national weather service out assessing that today. the difference between a 4 and 5 at this point is not much for the folks in moore. anyway, jim cantore in moore for us. thank you very much, sir. we re expecting to hear from the president in just a few moments. our live coverage of the tragedy in oklahoma continues right after the break. [ female announcer ] love. it s the most powerful thing on the planet. love holds us in the beginning. comforts us as we grow old. love is the reason you care. for all the things in your life. that make life worth living.
less populated area, then finally back into more population as you get closer to i-40. right now people s lives are being tossed around. this tornado on the ground the way i can see it 140 to 160-mile-per-hour tornado, the same type of strength that we saw in the shawnee tornado yesterday. we ve been showing pictures of that damage. we re going to see similar damage here but not only 15 or 20 homes we re talking thousands of homes going to look just like those pictures out of shawnee that we showed you today and then from last night s storm. this is a major damaging event. this is a deadly event. even the weather service saying many fatalities are likely with a storm of this size. if you don t take the precautions necessary, again, inside the house, some tornadoes one of the storms that went over moore at some point in time in years past was called unsurvivable. i don t believe that s the case here yet. i believe you can still get inside of a home, get into your storm shelter or into
message that he s giving the u.n. diplomat there. so underscoring that real contradiction, nic, some are alleging that the assaults being leveled by the government is actually intensifying while these talks were taking place. reporter: this is what the activists fear. they think that while the international community tries to engage president assad in some kind of talks and what kofi annan has gone there to do today is call for a cease-fire and get political talks going. the activists fear bashar al assad will just use this as a smoke screen to continue his military advance on the ground. that what he is looking for here is time to sort of continue the maximum sort of most deadly part of his campaign so he can sort of wrap that up and sort of push down the opposition, if you will, around the country so that from now on in the future, the death toll will be much lower and people will say, oh, the situation is getting better where as he s really using this time to go after
of devastation, really widespread. some of these images what used to be homes, structures. we saw one wall from the harrisburg med center just totally wiped out. as we continue to follow this story here, let s move on. okay? now we re going to go to missouri governor jay nixon spoke a little while ago about the status of his state and the aftermath. take a listen. i think put into context of a couple of things, first in the context of this particular site here, no loss of life. that s for preparation and also for the emergency responders that were here to make a real difference for folks in the middle of the night and the middle of a storm. just that training makes a serious and appropriate difference. but this is a lot of damage. the insurance issues here, the property damage issues here are going to be significant, but the bottom line is joplin is going to be a real sounding board for everybody else across our state, that you can rebuild, that you will rebuild, you ll sta