not that far from tipton and vidalia, georgia. move you ahead farther along, these storms are still on the ground. for a while, there were ten tornado warnings for ten separate storms all at the same time. seven storms may have had a tornado on the ground at the same time. now let me show you how this is an important storm for lee county. this is, right here, the tornado on the ground. this is the tornado signature, the doppler signature of what was on the ground at the time. and i know we ve lost 23 souls from this storm. but it missed auburn by about three miles. it missed columbus, georgia, and phoenix city, by about five miles. so it strung right through the most populated areas and missed them. it got some very bad damage near beauregard and in lee county itself, but i can t imagine our story this morning had this hit through auburn where the university is or through
wind in an eye wall. and that lasted for about 60 miles or so in this line right through here just to the north of columbus, georgia. to the south of auburn, alabama. another storm made its way very, very close to warner robbins air force there and macon here, right between those two cities and many other tornadoes on the ground all night long. in fact, 35 to 36 reports of tornadoes. the longest one maybe could be 65 miles long. and i ll tell you why that s so important. let s get to this map here. i ll give you a tornado signature. this is where we re talking about. columbus, georgia. and that s lee county, alabama right there. i move you ahead to 3:00 eastern time. there s a tornado on the ground very close to tuskegee, following the i-85 corridor. move you ahead a few more minutes. this tornado is still on the ground there. there s the tornado near warner robins. a tornado east of albany north of albany and all along, even
open fields is where you want a wedge tornado. that s where we were here across southwestern manitoba. if it hit winnipeg it would be a different story. look at the storm system here. dynamic here. on the backside of it we have snow. snowing big sky, montana if you can believe that in the peaks. 10,000 feet up. that s impressive this time of the year. we are in august after all. fly in here closer. there s manitoba canada and there s the tornado touchdown extreme southwestern manitoba the cell that moved up. a clear rotation there on the radar perspective and you can see that is indicative of a tornado signature there and so certainly thankfully no one hurt with this tornado. we continue to see this low moving to the north and east. on the eastern flank of it here terrific thunderstorms have been exploding ahead of it. the big story, well out ahead of the storm is the heat. are you ready for triple-digits? it s not that you are ready.
stanton. that went away. these chasers were to the east of that tornado, thinking they were in very good shape. all of a sudden, we saw the new tornado signature on the radar. the storm regenerated a tornado about four miles east of that first one. separated from the first one and moved there. this one you re looking at right now is a very large max i tornado. we re looking at ef-3, ef-4 damage that moved through that town. we saw debris in the sky from that town. it is now north of u.s. 275. and the one that you re looking at, you just can t see it to the right if they pan to the right a little bit, that one would be moving towards wisner, nebraska right along highway 275. you need to be taking cover now. this is open country, but these are major tornadoes on the ground. wind speeds in excess right now, wolf, i m going to going 175 to 200 miles per hour. paralleling themselves. hold on. and in northeastern nebraska.
passing us just now with all the windows shattered, all the windows blown out of the car, driving toward a cvs. i can only imagine driving into that parking lot trying to get something for the people that got cut by the glass that got blown out of their car. people are in the way of this tornado. it has turned into a sport that is going to kill people and you need to get off the road as soon as you can, because this is terrible. so chad, the weather service has issued a tornado emergency. how does that differ than what we ve been watching earlier? reporter: yeah. this is very important for the people to know, that a tornado emergency means that a confirmed large tornado is headed to a major metropolitan area. it even can be a town of 5,000 to 10,000 people. but right now, we have a large violent tornado on the ground in southwestern oklahoma city, very close to will rogers airport. it is without a doubt on the ground. i m looking straight at the radar. i can tell you just because o