this is the town up here in el reno, oklahoma. look at the town size right here, compared to the storm size overall. this was the path of the storm. it was on the ground for quite a while, 6:03 p.m. is when it formed way over here. moved this way. stayed there until 6:43 p.m. covered almost 16 mile. do the math there, you realize on any given area, it could have been grinding away for 2 minutes or more. as you mentioned, it was not only strong, well, well over 200 miles an hour, but quite wide. 2.6 miles across at its biggest area and ef-5. one more thing to note in all this, erin, at one point the weather officials say it went from a mile across to 2.6 miles across in less than a minute. so it was not only moving this way and grinding away, it was not only big, it was explosive in the way that it was reaching out and roping more people in. erin? tom, please doents go any write.
formed way over here. moved this way. stayed there until 6:43 p.m. covered almost 16 mile. do the math there, you realize on any given area, it could have been grinding away for 2 minutes or more. as you mentioned, it was not only strong, well, well over 200 miles an hour, but quite wide. 2.6 miles across at its biggest area and ef-5. one more thing to note in all this, erin, at one point the weather officials say it went from a mile across to 2.6 miles across in less than a minute. so it was not only moving this way and grinding away, it was not only big, it was explosive in the way that it was reaching out and roping more people in. erin? tom, please don t go anywhere. i want to bring in bill nigh the science guy. incredibly rare in a lot of ways. can you give some comparison on how huge that is relative to a typical tornado and what could have been made it so wide?
the loose may possibly have bombs on his person is unclear, but clearly they felt there was enough of a threat here in this immediate couple of block radius to converge here, try to get the neighbors to go back inside, to check things out and almost as quickly as they got here they wrapped back up, got back in their vehicles and darted off down the street deeper into the neighborhoods possibly to check some other call out. that s what we ve been seeing. it will be all quiet and suddenly you ll see numerous law enforcement officers from all varying agencies converge on a given area. we ve seen everyone from the atf to big tactical units, military units. clearly they are ready for anything and when things happen they are ready to move. we have seen that all throughout the day. jon. jon: the chopper that we see circling overhead we believe that to be applies chopper is that correct, molly? well now it s actually left the area. we thought that was a smaller state police chopper and then
clarify. if you have a tornado going through an area highly populated, you could have 20 reports on one tornado. it gives sometimes the false premise that you have 20 different tornadoes. no, you have a bunch of reports. the national weather service will come out with an official report. perhaps tomorrow. maybe tuesday. they ll give us an official report on the entire thing. not just what happened in yazoo city, but for the entire two-day b event that began late friday into saturday. this morning there s still a chance of a tornado or two. let s go back in time. 10:30 yesterday. there s the one cell that clicked right to the north half of the city. the northern part of yazoo city. guesstimated to be a mile high. it s impossible to really tell when someone is seeing this thing move across a given area, the scale can sometimes be a little bit deceiving. they ll have the local national weather service office go out, take ha look at thrks and they ll measure the length and width of the sto