car. the roof was all the way down on the seat. one car we know was a ford because we saw the hubcap, that s the only reason we could tell what type of car it was. didn t even have the engine in the car anymore. it was a new car. it wasn t like somebody was working on this car. this was a newer car, later model, 2010, 12, whatever it might have been. the engine, transmission, completely gone. we looked around in the field. could not even find the engine. that s what will happen to your car if you get hit by a major tornado. chad, we ll be back to you later in the show. thank you very much for now. stay safe. it s obviously a moving and dangerous situation. now with us from el reno, oklahoma is storm chaser nick helens. can you hear me? it s a bad line. can you hear me? yes. we re here. can you hear me? yes. what is going on where you are? we are about ten miles south of minko right now.
hopefully, this is over with. and we can just help people through the beak ebd. for those of you just tuning in, tell me again, nick, the power and size of the tornadoes in that area. the one that we were about a hundred yards from, it was definitely a very large, dangerous wrapping around fast tornado. we were about a hundred yards away. we had about 87 mile an hour winds coming off the north edge of it. it was definitely a violent tornado. and do you have any knowledge of what s going on on the interstate at the moment? that seems to be where most of the trouble has been tonight. it was only about 300 yards
we were in el reno when the large wedge went through town. just south of i-40. we were about 100 yards away from it. right now, we just have lots of rain. still some rotation on radar. it s actually all wrapping around us right now. in terms of damage that you ve seen to vehicles or to property, what have you seen so far? we did see a very large three story house with the whole top roof gone or the whole top second floor and roof gone. we did actually, nick, if i could stop you, as i talk to you, we re looking at a picture. this is a weather channel car that s been damaged tonight by one of these tornadoes. you can see there, pretty extensive damage. that is the official weather channel car. we believe the people in it are okay. it gives you some indication of what is going on.
last one. they were not handling it very well. they were pretty upset. we have to tell them, this time, we re underground. we re safe. we are underground. we are safe. so thank youfully, one of our new neighbors in our new house had a storm shelter. that s good to hear. thankfully, it doesn seem like it s been too bad tonight. yeah, hopefully so. thank you, piers. check back in now, storm chaser nick helens. nick, what s going on there now? the line is funneling out of the area. we re just getting small hail and rain now. we re going to go back to the house where we saw damage earlier and checked on them to make sure that they don t need anything.
continue what you were telling me. we were right by them when they did roll. we did call off the chase at that point and went and checked on the people in the house. they were okay. they were in a shelter. they had about 50 horses in a barn that also had damage but thankfully, they were okay and we continued on at that point. what is your plan now? where will you be going to next? well, since we can t really get on any of the main highways, i honestly don t know right this second. i guess we ll wait here and just see what s coming behind this line. well, stay safe, nick. i m sure we ll talk to you again later on in the evening. will do. thank you. appreciate it. with me on the phone is betsy randolph, state trooper with the oklahoma highway patrol. can you hear me?