mississippi river and the tennessee river valley. it s a guarden-variety thunderstorms into wednesday and a clearing pattern as we move into moore, oklahoma, which is great news t. will be cool tonight. temperatures will warm up. a slight chance of storms later this week. but nothing severe on the horizon, although, greta made mention that may is typically the busiest month for tornadoes. so they are not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. janice, that this one that hit moore, oklahoma, was on the ground for a long time. so two technical questions. what keeps a tornado down so long? number 1? and number 2; what make its begin to slow down and vanish? those are very good questions. ones that scientists are not really sure of. there is one thing there is a couple of things that a tornado of this magnitude needs. it needs the moisture feed. it needs the warm air from the
breaking news. the oklahoma tornado, we have now received word that among the 51 victims are 20 children. but the number of fatalities will increase by at least 40 according to the medical examiner. we just spoke with her. she said that the majority of the additional 40 will be children. joining us now, melisa newton. her husband is the chief meteorologist in a local abc affiliate. she took cover just moments before the tornade tornado tore through moore, oklahoma, leveling a school, damaging four other schools, homes and businesses, hospitals and banks. i mean, the list goes on and on. thanks for being with us, melease a. as i understand it,
counsel people over the next week. just story after story like that. so we are trying to be a place to connect resources with the needs of the people in our community. go ahead. i m sorry. i was going to say, that s been pretty amazing to see, the community, the state and really the country reaching out to these folk who is are hurting and struggling. ben, the country was watching right after 3:00, after that tornado hit moore, oklahoma. we were watching individuals down on the ground, going through debris, frantically trying to find what looked like children in that school, teachers in that school that had been possibly buried under the debris. when i was watching that video and all of us were, it was heartbreaking because you feel for those parents, the emergency crews couldn t get down there. you said, you were there on the scene, you saw this grandmother who was looking through the debris, hoping and praying i am sure as she was doing this, for her little grandchild.
so the first responders can do their job. and she can come here and have a safe shelter and continue to look for her family. okay. thank you so much. we will continue to follow this story in oklahoma. i am sure we will be talking to you throughout the day. we wish you the best. thank you so much. we appreciate all that you do to get the word out. we ll be right back. stay with us.
once you experience it, there s no going back. wow. don t invest in a mattress until you find your sleep number setting. sale ends june 2nd. only at the sleep number store. sleep number. comfort individualized the oklahoma tornado, the death toll is 51, that number will surely go up, according to the medical examiner with whom woe spoke. but let s go to the scene. we have folks that you talked to there. what did you find out? reporter: hi, gregg. i talked to two volunteer who is are part of the search-and-rescue team. ainsly was asking me about cars that were marked with an x or a home and it was a signal that those areas had been searched and checked for survivors and that they had moved on. they were also these two women were doing part of that