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...SYNOPSIS... A SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK APPEARS INCREASINGLY LIKELY ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE UPPER MIDWEST/LOWER GREAT LAKES FROM THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH THIS EVENING. INTENSE STORM DEVELOPMENT IN A VERY UNSTABLE AIRMASS...COINCIDENT WITH A COMPACT AND INTENSIFYING SURFACE LOW SHOULD RESULT IN NUMEROUS DAMAGING WIND EVENTS AS WELL AS SCATTERED...POSSIBLY STRONG TORNADOES. ...ERN IA/NRN IL/NRN IND/NWRN OH AND ADJACENT AREAS OF EXTREME SRN WI AND SWRN LOWER MI...

Ingredients are coming together across parts of the Midwest and Ohio Valley that could potentially trigger a derecho on Wednesday into Wednesday night. While it isn't exactly a certainty whether or not a derecho will form, some of the cities and towns most at risk include Chicago, Ill.; Columbus, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Aurora, Ill.; Dayton, Ohio and Davenport, Iowa, to name a few. Strictly speaking, a derecho is a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. These showers and thunderstorms produce wind damage over a large swath of land. While...

JOPLIN, Mo. — A new engineering study of the damage caused by the May 2011 tornado that struck Joplin found no evidence that it was an EF5, as the National Weather Service found, because the city's homes and businesses weren't built to withstand wind speeds that strong, making such a determination impossible. The study by the American Society of Civil Engineers found that more than 83 percent of the damage on May 22, 2011, was caused by winds of 135 mph or less, which is equal to the maximum wind speed of an EF2 tornado, and that about 13 percent...

DENVER - The news of the deaths of storm chasers Tim Samaras, his son Paul Samaras, and veteran chasing partner Carl Young have stunned the storm chasing and weather science community and left many questions unanswered. How did this happen to one of the most cautious and safest storm chasers in the country? How did the team find themselves trapped in a tornado? What happened? "He was just caught up in a very unfortunate situation, where he was tracking a tornado and the tornado turned against him and there was no way he could get out from it," Tim's brother,...

Oklahoma had barely started clearing the rubble from a monstrous tornado two weeks ago when another rash of twisters plowed through this ill-fated swath of Tornado Alley. At least 16 people are dead across the state after a vicious storm tore through the area Friday evening, Oklahoma City Fire Chief Keith Bryant said Monday morning. That number may continue to rise. Authorities will resume their search Monday for six people still missing, including four who sought shelter in storm drains, Bryant said. [Snip] A trio of storm chasers who devoted their lives to hunting powerful storms died in the middle...

Tim Samaras had one passion in life: Tornadoes. He told The Weather Channel that when he was kid, his mother sat him down in front of The Wizard of Oz; he was immediately entranced by the violent, dark twister that tore through the landscape.Samaras went on to become one of the premier storm chasers in the country. He was an engineer who designed probes that captured information at the base of the tornado, the part that can destroy homes and buildings in seconds.The problem — and the exhilarating part — is that in order for those probes to work, they...

For thousands of residents in Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois, and Southwest Indiana, the days following March 18, 1925 must have been horrendous. Hundreds of lives had been taken and thousands were injured or left homeless. With so many fatalities, so many injuries, so much destruction, and so many lives torn apart, it was now time to clean up the mess that nature had left behind. But this was much easier said than done—for it would take months to rebuild what had been demolished in less than 4 hours. Let’s take a brief look at what happened years ago, on that...

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Storm chaser Tim Samaras was killed Friday doing what he loved: chasing tornadoes. He and his son Paul perished in the El Reno, Oklahoma tornado along with frequent partner on storm chasing adventures, photographer Carl Young. Samaras had a long relationship with National Geographic, providing some of our most memorable videos of storms.

URGENT - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED TORNADO WATCH NUMBER 262 NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER NORMAN OK 330 PM CDT FRI MAY 31 2013 THE NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER HAS ISSUED A * TORNADO WATCH FOR PORTIONS OF CENTRAL AND NORTHEAST OKLAHOMA * EFFECTIVE THIS FRIDAY AFTERNOON FROM 330 PM UNTIL MIDNIGHT CDT. ...THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION... * PRIMARY THREATS INCLUDE... SEVERAL INTENSE TORNADOES LIKELY NUMEROUS VERY LARGE HAIL EVENTS TO 4 INCHES IN DIAMETER LIKELY NUMEROUS DAMAGING WIND GUSTS LIKELY WITH SEVERAL SIGNIFICANT GUSTS TO 80 MPH POSSIBLE THE TORNADO WATCH AREA IS APPROXIMATELY ALONG AND 65 STATUTE MILES...

<p>DEVELOPING: A massive tornado has touched down west of Oklahoma City where it has done damage and it is headed toward Oklahoma City.</p> <p>The National Weather Service has issued a tornado emergency for the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. Weather service forecaster Daryl Williams says the emergency issued Friday evening includes Oklahoma City and some suburbs.</p>

OKC TORNADO WARNING, LIVE VIDEO FEED http://abcnews.go.com/live

They are sounding the sirens across southern Oklahoma City and Moore, Oklahoma at the present time. A tornado is indicated on the ground just north of Will Rogers World Airport - just south of the fairgrounds. 100+ mph winds reported. Debris indicated on radar. Storm is moving west. Interstate is packed with rush hour traffic at the present time. Storm is predicted to hit downtown OKC at around 7:30 / Moore at around 7:45 / Tinker AFB at around 8:00

President Obama in Asbury Park, NJ on Tuesday: "So, Jersey, you’ve still got a long road ahead, but when you look out on this beach -- this beautiful beach here, even in the rain, it looks good. You look out over the horizon, you can count on the fact that you won’t be alone. Your fellow citizens will be there for you -- just like we’ll be there for folks in Breezy Point and Staten Island -- (applause) -- and obviously, we’re going to be there for the folks in Monroe [sic], Oklahoma, after the devastation of last week. (Applause.)...

President Obama said the government would be there for the “folks in Monroe, Oklahoma after the devastation of last week” during his address on the Jersey Shore Tuesday afternoon.

Video from inside another school and updates.

Yes, climate change is happening. But it's hard to say that the tornado that ripped through Moore, Oklahoma -- or any given tornado, for that matter -- was influenced by climate change. Scientific research has not made a clear connection between tornadoes and climate change, said J. Marshall Shepherd, climate change expert and professor at the University of Georgia. There is currently a much better understanding of how climate change increases the risks of droughts, heat waves and precipitation, he said. There are also indications that changing patterns may influence the intensity of hurricanes. But as far as tornadoes: There's...

While following the aftermath of the tornado in Moore I was disgusted to see people using the tragedy to make political statements or to slam the political opposition. Before all the debris had even fallen back down to the earth, Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse took the microphone on the Senate floor and lambasted Republican Senators for "denying man-made global warming." He laid blame for the tornado squarely at the feet of Republicans while the dying and injured were still being pulled from the rubble. He was far from the only one to make partisan hay of the destruction...

There is no better steward of American taxpayer dollars than Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. When Hurricane Sandy struck last year, he fought to eliminate non-emergency items from a supplemental disaster relief bill that included millions for road construction in states not affected by the hurricane. So when a monster tornado struck his home state yesterday the liberal press immediately tried to brand Coburn as a hypocrite for accepting federal funds. The Huffington Post reported: "Coburn spokesman John Hart on Monday evening confirmed that the senator will seek to ensure that any additional funding for tornado disaster relief in Oklahoma be...

When the main US federal emergency agency arrives at the scene of a disaster-hit area, one of the first places it turns to is the local Waffle House – and not just for its officials to grab a quick bite.