years past because we really, truly haven t had such good doppler radar. and we haven t had such big tornadoes. if a tornado is on the ground, wolf, it spins up, and it picks up things. picks up shingles and boards and everything else and parts of cars. that debris gets up into the cloud. well, the radar beam actually can see boards a lot better than it can see small rain drops. so when you see a big bright spot right there over newcastle, that s actually parts of the ground. that s trees and roots and that s singles in the air that the radar is picking up. it s called a debris ball because it looks like a ball. but the debris is what the radar is seeing. it s not even raining there. it s the debris from the tornado itself. we had one here, a debris ball that came across, and just to the west of about el reno and into peed mon, just north of piedmont, and just missed edmund, a couple hours ago. there were cells up and down. that s the north side of oklahoma. there s the red river, that
that tornado proper. we know it s there. we know it s headed to piedmont, oklahoma. if you re anywhere near that area, you need to be in a safe place now. this is a very large tornado on the ground. and define a safe place, chad. well, in oklahoma, i lived there for 2 1/2 years. there are very few basements. the safest place is inside your home, in between you and as many walls and the outside as you can. think about this. don t be on the very outside edge of your house where there is a window right there and you can see outside. put a wall and then another wall and then maybe a closet inside of a bedroom between you and the outside. anywhere down below ground is obviously the safest place to be. and there are also safe rooms that you can build or have built for you with kevlar anchored to the slab itself. they are a few thousand dollars but those safe rooms could have saved some lives. people in oklahoma have those safe rooms. they take their garage and blast
all, not even local news. this is a big tornado hitting another major big populated area. people ask me all the time, wolf, why don t big tornadoes ever hit cities? you look down from an airplane, the cities are small compared to the farms that are just so large. there s just not as much city as there is farm, and so it s just a law of averages that typically that a storm will hit a farmland, a range land. the past this now three times from tuscaloosa and birmingham to joplin, missouri, and now into piedmont, oklahoma, they will be picking up the pieces. we hope the people are safe. this is a very large and deadly tornado on the ground headed west toward oklahoma city. is it moving back towards joplin too, this wave of tornadoes? in effect, but that would be four hours away, wolf. way beyond what this storm would hold together. but there will be lines and more
everybody. look at that. oh, my gosh. hopefully, they will get everybody out of there and safe. the motion is tremendous. david payne, are you still with us? violent tornado coming into piedmont. david, are you there? yeah, mike, can you hear me? go. it s a half mile wide wedge. it s another killer tornado. it went across highway 81 is when it re-intensified. it almost got us. it intensified. it s amazing. it s a half mile wide. killer tornado. it just crossed gregory road. now going to cross northwest expressway in about a minute. it s crossing northwest expressway right now. it s a massive tornado. it s a half mile wide, no doubt about it. it looks just like it did an hour and a half ago. deadly, deadly, deadly tornado, mike, coming down the northwest side of the metro. back to you. let me just update our viewers on the breaking news. we ve been reporting on it s now official that tornado in joplin,
are you familiar with this area? ellrino was the town as the tornado moved just a mile north of ellrino. keep going. oklahoma city, i-40, ellrino is right there. it moved from hinton across i-40 and made a run at piedmont. now it s continuing here. this is the word cashen. that s where the other damage is right there. and it is still on the ground moving up toward guthrie, another very populated area. although literally, obviously, the bulk of the population is here, but the population does spread out north and south from oklahoma city. i m very worried about what s going on in oklahoma. stand by for a moment. anderson cooper is on the ground for us as well. anderson, you see the breaking news out of oklahoma city, oklahoma, they re bracing for more tornadoes right now. what s it like where you are?