reporter: this ominous sight is a wedge tornado, rolling in to northern mississippi. tupelo station, wtva was on the air when the tornado touched down. we re still on the air. reporter: the twister left a trail of destruction. in arkansas, homes and lives were tossed upside down after a powerful tornado tore through on sunday. we need to go around the back. some residents returned to their neighborhoods where their homes once stood. families sifting through the debris, salvaging whatever they could. more than a dozen people were killed when a powerful twister carved an 80-mile path of destruction through suburban little rock. the deadly tornado slammed in to the town of vilonia striking with enough force to toss this bell from a local methodist church 75 yards. the governor mike beebe says it is the strongest he s ever seen. encrusted in cement that s completely ripped out of the
those violent tornadoes tearing across the south wreaked havoc in alabama. governor bentley declared a state of emergency in all alabama counties. it s moving to the right. reporter: this wedge tornado touched down in tupelo, mississippi. the massive twister more than a mile wide demolished buildings and wiped out power lines. look at this aerial view of destruction in mayflower, arkansas. from the ground, you can see how the storm tossed and piled semis on top of one another. one of the most powerful twisters struck just north of little rock, arkansas governor mike beebe says it s the strongest he s ever seen. this was a massive powerful tornado. residents returned to vilonia and found their homes and neighborhood completely flattened. the mulligan family huddled together in a closet and prayed. i didn t think we were going to make it. i just remember hearing my dad yell that, please, god just save
it was the area in arkansas that was the worst. that s where you re going to see the pictures from today. one thunderstorm, one supercell thunderstorm lasted for two and a half hours producing tornadoes. they had a large wedge tornado with it. that was a half mile wide at one point. they had at least 150 mile-per-hour winds. that went for 100 miles with damage being done. where is the greatest threat today for tornadoes? we have a moderate risk of severe weather from nashville through northern alabama, straight through much of mississippi. that s who s at the greatest risk of the tornadoes. here s the closer view of that. go from jackson, mississippi, draw a line to nashville. about 50 miles on either side of that is the greatest risk of tornadoes from 4:00 to 10:00 p.m. this evening. some days you get missed by these big storms but looks like more strong tornadoes later on today. while these people are cleaning up, we get another round. it s ugly and we re paying the price.
this is this reef shreveport, l. nebraska, iowa, right on the border of kansas city and missouri. this line here, this was the main event as we went through this evening. last night, that was. it was one super cell thunderstorm that produced all of this tornado damage. one storm. a very strong storm that produced it appears about a 2 1/2 hour tornado. a large wedge tornado. that s the tornado that goes all the way to the ground. the damage i ve seen so far, i d say probably about an ef-3 or greater. 150-mile-an-hour winds plus and that damage path was 100 miles long. there s a lot of small towns, little houses out in the rural areas we haven t seen yet because we haven t gotten helicopters over the area.
that right there i think that entire thing right there, i think that is a large wedge tornado. wow. we re looking at it from a little ways away, but we re getting a really good look at it. now, there s power flashes. right there. we are clearly. that was actually well outside of the area that i wrout lined. i think maybe the east northern side of the storm is probably in here, and then it looks like part of that tornado is actually being obscured by rain where we just saw some power flashes in here. it s very humid out there, and when it s humid like that, it s a lot more difficult to see the storms. it s very different from what we see in the plains, for example, when you have a dryer environment and the air is much clearer, and you get a good look at these things long before they get to you. storms across the south can be very dangerous because you don t get a good look at them. there are a lot of trees, of course, in a good part of the south, and they have very low bases so,