storm chaser: take that shed. narrator: it's hard to imagine the power of mother nature. storm chaser: watch behind her, scotty. narrator: even if you're in a shelter, even if you're exactly where you're supposed to be during a tornado. for those one, two, three minutes when everything is falling apart around you, it's chaos. storm chaser: that is one of the [indistinct] tornado. storm chaser: oh my god. back up. narrator: and you're just at the mercy of mother nature. it really is a terrifying experience to go through. storm chaser: run it back-- oh, that's a trailer house. [theme music] welcome to violent earth. i'm liev schreiber. 2023 set an all time record for weather and climate related disasters in the us. 28 events with losses over $1 billion. wildfires, hurricanes, and floods are more frequent than ever. the earth is changing. tonight, we delve into one of the most powerful natural hazards in the world, tornadoes. terrifying vortexes unleashed from thunderstorms that can cause unimaginable destruction. few examples of their power are more definitive than the 2011 twister that hit joplin, missouri. categorized as an ef5, the highest level possible, with maximum winds over 200 miles per hour, the tornado cut right through the center of the city. storm chaser: oh my gosh. oh my gosh. jim riek: late may is the bull's eye in the midwest for tornadoes. joplin was under a risk of a tornado, but not a great risk. storm chaser: that is a tornado, people. there was a complex of storms that came toward the city. oh my gosh. the tornado formed just outside of the joplin city limits. storm chaser: listen to it! jim riek: and then it just started racing into joplin. [indistinct shouting] all the alarms are going off on my computer, and here it comes. storm chaser: there! storm chaser: i see it. i see it. just straight through the heart of joplin, missouri. storm chaser: oh gosh, that is a monster tornado. i couldn't really see anything because it was obscured by rain. jim riek: it was rain rain. i think that's why so many people died. they did not realize that what they were seeing was the tornado. in this case, an ef5 tornado that is catastrophic. and by the time they did, it's too late. jeff piotrowski: as the tornado went by, everything was gone. it was like a bulldozer, and it leveled everything in its path. kat piotrowski: i just couldn't believe what i was seeing, the millions and millions of pieces of debris. jim riek: the tornado was on the ground for 32 minutes. storm chaser: the sirens are going. jim riek: it hits a convenience store on east 20th street. they had locked it just so the door wouldn't fling open. jim riek: listen to the audio. [screaming, rain pounding] jeff piotrowski: as the tornado entered the center part of the city, it hit the high school, and that's where the max damage occurred. jim riek: that surveillance video from the high school is no more than a hundred yards from amber munson's house. donna kerry: in 2011, amber was 40 years old. amber has always been amber, just always generous and kind and hospitable and just fun to be around. amber was home that afternoon. she wasn't aware that the tornado was coming. she didn't have her tv on and no indicators that it was gonna be that severe. i had spoken to her. she said, oh, it's just turned really dark here. and then she said, um, now the sirens are going off. and that's when i said, you know, go take the quilt off the top of your bed and get in your bathtub. i said, and then call me back. very few houses in joplin, particularly in the path of what turned out to be this tornado, had basements. so the best place to go is either a closet or in your bathtub. harold brooks: you wanna get as low as you can and put as many walls between you and the tornado as possible. storm chaser: oh gosh. i was concerned when she said the sirens were going off. i wouldn't even have imagined the magnitude of what was gonna come. jim riek: amber munson, probably 15 seconds before the tornado hit, realized just how bad it was going to be. and bang. the tornado hit. for tornadoes to form, you have to have a certain set of ingredients. first of all, you have to have moisture available for thunderstorms to develop. you have to have a source of lift or a trigger for those thunderstorms to get going. you have to have unstable air, which is temperatures that get colder with height and that allows the thunderstorm to rise and develop vertically. the most important ingredient is you have to have wind shear, which is changing of wind direction with height and also changing wind speeds with height. there's all sorts of different shapes tornadoes can take. we have a stovepipe, which is kind of like a straight up and down type tornado. we have obviously a cone. that makes sense. it's a cone shape. another one is the wedge, and that's usually the most intense. different tornadoes have different smells. when a tornado is going through a densely wooded area, you can smell the fresh cut wood, the fresh cut pine, whatever the tree is. paul markowski: the typical widths are anywhere from probably 25 to 50 yards across on the low end to, on the high end, a mile wide. tim marshall: the largest one i've ever seen was the el reno, oklahoma tornado, and that was over two miles wide. kim klockow mcclain: the joplin tornado became a mile wide wedge right on the edge of town. kat piotrowski: the tornado was massive. it was chewing up everything in its path. there was no mercy at all. er: breaking news here at cnn. joplin, missouri, suffering the devastation right now of a very powerful tornado. jim riek: amber lived in what i would call a very middle class area of joplin. jeff piotrowski: this beautiful, quaint subdivision, and now it's level. kat piotrowski: it was just total devastation. our phone rang, and it was her, and she was screaming, mother, my house is on top of me. that's when i said, amber, that's not funny, because we would always kid back and forth. and she said, no, mom, my house is on top of me. and then her phone went dead. so there's a lot of myths that have been passed down through the years. reporter: doors and windows on the north and east sides were open. trent okerson: whenever i was growing up, i heard you've got to open up the windows to equalize the air pressure. well, pressure is not what will cause damage to a home. it's wind getting up under the roof, blowing the roof off. another big misconception is if you're out in a vehicle, that an overpass is a great place to take shelter. that is not a good place to go. scientists have realized that being in that overpass creates a bit of a wind tunnel effect, that the wind is blowing through a smaller area so it can actually accelerate the wind speeds. so you're putting yourself in greater danger. kim klockow mcclain: there's a really popular misconception that mobile homes are like tornado attractors, and what's behind that is undoubtedly that people hear about mobile homes getting hit more because that's where people die. harold brooks: roughly half of the deaths in tornadoes occur in mobile and manufactured homes. they're much more vulnerable to a tornado and tend to turn into debris quicker. there are myths that tornadoes can't cross bodies of water. oh, tornadoes can't go through cities. jeff piotrowski: but there are no rules when it comes to tornadoes. they go where they wanna go. harold brooks: the deadliest tornado in us history is march 18, 1925, the tri-state tornado that went across southeastern missouri, southern illinois into southwestern indiana, and it killed 695 people over about a two and a half hour long period. generally, after the tri-state tornado, we see, like, a 10-fold decrease in the fatality rate from tornadoes as compared to 1925. we think there are a lot of things that could be going on behind that. there was the emergence of radio and people downstream could hear about it immediately. radar has had something to do with this, increases in our understanding of storms, and now the ability to push warnings to people on their cell phones. harold brooks: but the may 22, 2011 tornado at joplin, missouri, was the deadliest tornado in decades in the united states. being the seventh deadliest in us history. jim riek: on that day, it didn't matter what type of forecasting skills you had, what technology. the tornado won. [dramatic music] jeff piotrowski: everything basically was a three foot, four foot pile of debris everywhere as far as the eye could see. just debris everywhere. there's really nothing standing. donna kerry: in her immediate neighborhood, there were 16 people that perished. jim riek: jeff piotrowski sees a lady who is hysterical, has no idea what has happened to her. and that's amber munson. you could hear amber before you saw her, and that's what i remember more than anything is hearing her cries out. amber munson: can i use your phone? jeff piotrowski: what? kat piotrowski: and coming towards us. jeff piotrowski: yeah, all the phones are jammed. kat piotrowski: jeff jumped out of the car immediately and raced towards her. i'm ok. i'm ok. jeff piotrowski: come here. come here. hello? hello? how did she survive? amber munson: once the tornado sirens went off and the lights started flickering, i grabbed a pillow and a blanket and my phone and i jumped into the bathtub. i decided to roll over on my right side and i kind of got into a fetal position and covered myself up. but as the pressure started coming, the bath started bouncing. so it was very minor at first, not realizing that you're gonna get sucked out of your house. after the tornado hit, i remember hearing the glass shatter, but i don't remember flying in the tornado. amber munson went flying, ended up in someone else's yard. amber munson: when i woke up, i just remember being upside down, buried within the rubble. i knew i was alive, but i still questioned whether or not i was gonna survive because of the stuff that was falling on me. i think just wanting to survive kicked in for her. i kind of wiggled myself out so that i could get up, and that's when i got out of the hole. i had twisted my knee and i had a puncture wound in my back. but she's alive. it was a miracle. amber munson: the joplin tornado, having lived through it, made me realize that people don't take them serious enough. you see people that go stand on the front porch wanting to capture these things, not realizing how risky they really can be. storm chaser: oh, we got lightning. a slow network is no network for business. that's why more choose comcast business. and now we're introducing ultimate speed for business, our fastest plans yet. we're up to 12 times faster than verizon, at&t, and t-mobile. and existing customers could even get up to triple the speeds at no additional cost. from the company with 99.9% network reliability and advanced cyber security, it's ultimate speed for ultimate business. and it's all from comcast business. trent okerson: storm chasing has gotten extremely popular over the past couple of decades. storm chaser: get the best footage. harold brooks: people do it, in large part, for the thrill and for the excitement of seeing the event. storm chaser: tornado number one. tornado number two. the original tornado is still on the ground. tim marshall: once you get out there and you see a storm in the open plains and the amazing structure that it has, it's mesmerizing, and it can become even addicting. storm chaser: my goodness. that is a thing of beauty and violence. max olson: there's a side to it that's almost like a hunter, because you're trying to narrow down where in the country this relatively rare phenomenon is gonna take place. storm chaser: come on. tim marshall: now there are thousands of people who do this. there's even tour groups nowadays, and you can get in a van and go with a group of fellow enthusiasts and drive out onto the plains and see the majestic skies. allison chinchar: in the united states, we average more than 1,200 tornadoes per year. that is number one in the world by a long shot. the second closest is canada, which only gets 100 per year. you could actually add canada, australia, and all european countries combined, and we still see more than they do. tornadoes are most common in the midwest. max olson: we also have another area that's really prone to tornadoes in our southeastern states. harold brooks: the tornado season depends on where you are in the country. in the plains, tornado season is typically over a relatively short period of time in the springtime. in the southeastern united states, tornadoes are more likely to occur at any time of the year. tornadoes actually can and do strike all over the country. tim marshall: tornadoes have been known to be in every state of the us. they have been in the highest of mountains, beaches, and offshore. harold brooks: over the last 50 years, what we've seen has been an increase in the number of tornadoes in what we think of as the mid-south. it looks like it's associated with physical changes in the atmosphere, but we don't have a real underlying reason of why that's occurred. reporter: a rare sight in the skies over japan. a powerful twister ripping across the eastern part of the nation. tornadoes occur worldwide. jeff piotrowski: europe has tornadoes. south america has tornadoes. australia, japan. trent okerson: but the united states has a unique combination of geographical features that can lend itself to a lot of tornadoes. the gulf of mexico, that provides the very warm, humid air. then you also get cooler, drier air that's either coming down from canada or off the rockies. there's really no other place in the world that has the exact combination of ingredients like we do here in the united states. storm chaser: zoom in. storm chasing has definitely evolved into this kind of social media era. storm chaser: where are we? northeast nebraska? max olson: and people wanna be seen. they wanna be, you know, the chaser that everybody thinks of, doing the live streams, posts in front of a tornado and whatnot. trent okerson: storm chasing is a double edged sword. it's very valuable when it comes to learning more about the science behind storms, but it can also be dangerous if you're not 100% sure of what you're doing. the biggest danger of storm chasing has always been the driving. storm chaser: let's go back. we're going back. we're going back. you tend to judge where the tornado is going, but that doesn't always happen. there are so many people who chase now on some storms that traffic is actually a serious problem. when i'm chasing out in the plains, i'm apt to see dozens of other chasers. when i began storm chasing, there were no other chasers. tim marshall: david hoadley, whether he likes it or not, is the father of modern day storm chasing. max olson: david hoadley is the first person to truly go out and seek tornadoes, driving long distances, attempting to come up with some sort of formula to see tornadoes. he holds the record for the longest consecutive years of storm chasing. i've been storm chasing 66 years, and i've seen 265 tornadoes. i saw my first tornado in 1958. i think this is one of the things that appealed to me was the element of, really, mystery. what causes these storms? there was so much that was unknown. 2023, i saw david hoadley out chasing. the man's 85 years old. he's been doing it for most of his life, and he's still out there doing it every single year. david hoadley: it's not like spelunking or surfboarding. you can return to the ocean. you can climb the mountains again and again and again. but that one tornado, that one storm, once it's gone, it's out. it's history. to have a picture of it, have a video or anything else of it, is to say that i've captured something that will never happen again. tornadoes are most common 4:00 to 8:00 pm. because that's when the atmosphere is warmest, you get the sunshine, heats things up, creates the most instability. that instability is fuel for thunderstorms. mason lillard: may 22, normal sunday. we went fishing for a little bit and we were getting ready to take my cousin lage home. i was 10 and lage was 14, and my grandpa was like, hey, i need some wiring for my garage at home depot. i would say probably around 5:00, 5:15-ish, the sky's starting to get a little kind of weird looking. my grandpa went inside of home depot and my cousin, my grandma, and myself were all sitting in the truck. we heard the sirens go off, but we just ignored them like normal. and then all of a sudden it went from kind of dark to, like, midnight black, almost. we were trying to open up the doors of the truck and the winds were just going too fast. and then my cousin, he was like, whoa, the truck's tearing up. and then at that moment, the truck flipped on its side and got sucked into the vortex. we could kind of hear everything, like the hail hitting the truck and stuff. it felt terrifying to be in that tornado. you see, like, the wizard of oz, and it's almost like that. but in real life, it's loud and you don't know what's going on. lage was sucked out of the truck. i felt like i was slipping out of the truck. i was holding on to my grandma's hand, and then i felt the truck land, like, the tires bounce. and i was like, ok. i'm alive, at least. all i felt was, like, my ribs were broken. i realized that something was actually in me. most people are killed in tornadoes by flying debris. storm chaser: that's the most violent motion. kim klockow mcclain: tornadoes consist of anything the tornado brings into the air. so often a lot of dust and dirt and plants, branches. and then if it's a more violent tornado, that can include debris like planks of wood, shards of glass. mason lillard: i hear my grandma. lage, lage. and i was like, mama, i hear him. he was outside of the truck. it wasn't like a, i'm here, or i'm ok. it was moaning. oh my god. oh my god. look at that. harold brooks: one of the things about a tornado is that it's producing a lot of small pieces of debris that are flying at, you know, 150 miles an hour. and even ordinary objects, dinner plates, two by fours, become really, really deadly at those kinds of high speeds. jim riek: i knew after joplin how destructive a tornado could be. it was moving so slowly that it was like a blender. everything on the ground was getting totally mixed together. and it just hits you again and again and again and again. i saw a piece of cardboard that actually penetrated into the exterior insulation finish system on a school. at the hospital, they had $1 million helicopter. all of the rotors are gone. if a rotor of a helicopter is flying by at 100 miles an hour, what is that going to do to a human body? paul markowski: how far the debris goes is going to depend on essentially how heavy it is. the heavier stuff gets centrifuged out, so big chunks of structures or automobiles. lighter debris, though, like a piece of paper, that won't get centrifuged out. that'll instead go up through the funnel, can end up reaching altitudes of 40, 50,000 feet, and there certainly testimonials out there, people finding pieces of paper or photographs 50 to 100 miles from their origin in the wake of a tornado. mason lillard: we thought it was only, like, 20 minutes before help arrived. it ended up almost being two hours. jim riek: when the paramedics came, they spotted lage first because he's outside. they carried lage out on a two by four, and they brought him to the ambulance, and the paramedic jumped out and said he's not gonna make it. the other ones were trying to cut me out. i had a one inch piece of angle iron go through my right shoulder, break seven ribs, puncture my lower lung, and come out my back. a fourth inch away from my spine and a fourth inch away from my liver. they ended up having to use an electric saw. it felt like 5,000 bees stinging me at one t