michelle grossman, i mean, one heck of a night, and this is not over yet. we ve still got storms coming our way. yeah, we still have a cold front moving through these really warm air masses, and it was a tough night for many, so i mean, specifically speaking about the mayfield tornado, we re talking about devastation, deadly, historical and just really unusual. i mean, these storms usually happen typically in the spring, maybe late fall, october, early november, but for december and two weeks from christmas, to see this type of system move through, it s really unheard of. so let s talk about the overall outbreak and then we ll move specifically to the super cell. so we saw 32 tornado reports. that doesn t mean 32 tornados, but it means reports. they move through towns and we see the reports, surveys go in. they tell us how many tornados go through. it s going to be a couple of days before we get the whole picture on this. as we zoom in closer on this super cell that mike was just tal
indescribable. the level of devastation is unlike anything i have ever seen. it appears total and complete. here s some footage today of an amazon facility in illinois. that s where the roof of the building was ripped off and a 100 foot portion of a wall collapsed, at least two people are reported to have died and multiple others have been injured there in edwardsville just a bit near st. louis. an employee described that chaotic scene. when i went around to the back area, that was completely destroyed. it was debris all across the lake, the power loss, the majority of the cars, some of the amazon advance close to the lake, and it was just completely destroyed. in arkansas, at least one person is dead, fiver seriously injured at a nursing home. the facility saying they took a direct hit from a tornado there: governor asa hutchinson is
terrifying. it really didn t hit me until after the tornado came across the highway in front of me and i noticed how large it was. i didn t expect to be i wasn t planning to be that close to it for one and it when i rolled down my window, it was like sucking me it s like it sucks all of the air right out of the vehicle. it was just and the roar was very intense. it was i mean, that s all i could hear. the tornado sirens went away. i mean, they were the roar of the i mean, you could hear like crackling, snapping, and
to me, it looked like that started to dissipate, and that moisture dissipated within the tornado. i can t confirm that, but as after it passed, you see more of a direct funnel type cloud wedge. yeah, yeah. and then as it gets farther away it turns into more of like a stove pipe. it is and gets skinnier. i mean, it is absolutely extraordinary what you do, mike, these pictures that you ve brought to us are extraordinary. i m so glad you re safe. and we may check in again with you during this broadcast to see an update from your perspective on where things stand today. it s extraordinary video, and mike, you ve got three kids so i don t need to remind you to stay safe and thank you so much for your time. all right, thank you. we re going to bring in our nbc meteorologist right now,
and tracked for 250 miles. i mean, typically when you have a tornado, a big, strong tornado, it will go a quarter mile, maybe a half mile. maybe five miles in some spots, but not 250 miles. also, the survey the damage survey, did it lift up? did it drop back down or stay on the ground the entire time? that s going to be super unusual and probably will land us in the longest tracking tornado. let s start in arkansas because that s where we saw the first warning, and that was around 5:20 yesterday, and then backing up even further, the storm prediction center sent out these alerts two days before. i think we started talking about it late wednesday into thursday that we knew a pretty big system was going to be coming. that was alerted on thursday, and then yesterday that was an enhanced risk. by yesterday we saw it moved up to a moderate risk. that s one of the highest. the news was out that this was going to be a pretty big outbreak. it was a pretty big outbreak, no matter how much war