earlier that showed homes that were leveled and buildings that were destroyed, i think, chad said this earlier, he was saying this was likely an ef-3 or stronger. that s what we would call a major tornado. winds around 150, maybe 165 miles per hour. you know, the weather service will come in and they ll look at all the damage and find the worst of the damage and get an estimated rating on that. it s hard to look at a tornado, a wedge-sized tornado, but when you re talking about a quarter of a mile to or three-quarters of a mile wide, i believe that s what ray foreman the meteorologist in joplin said, the path was probably a half a mile to three-quarters of a mile wide, we could be talking ef-4 potentially. we saw what happened in alabama on april 27th and this may be on par with that in items of such a large tornado and such a destructive tornado. are you standing by chad myers? yes. i want to you look at this
meteorologist jacqui jeras. we have been monitoring these feeds. you have been monitoring scanner traffic. we re told a number of injuries, possibility casualties. people are looking for people. what s going on? so much devastation. it s hard to get a handle on how widespread this is. of course, communication is extremely limited. they re asking people to stay out of the city because emergency crews are trying to set up triages to help the people who have been injured. and also, you know, there are some reports of doas as well, so we re not sure how many at this time. a tornado did touch down in joplin just before 6:00 central time. moved through the downtown area and continued to push on up toward the north and east of there. we ve got reports of buildings in downtown damaged, homes that have been completely leveled, trees that have been snapped off. and just, you know, rubble all over the place. the scene has been described as being roar ific. there are reports, as you me