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When members of Westboro Baptist Church showed up to picket Moore, Oklahoma, a town that was ravaged by a powerful tornado last year, they probably didn’t expect a reaction like this. Thousands of residents held a counter-protest across the street and eventually ran the Westboro members away.

Given model trends...it now appears a more substantial severe threat might develop from the srn plains into the lower-mid ms valley region thursday /day 5/ as the shortwave trough ejects enewd resulting in height falls across the warm sector and a strengthening llj. Storms may develop along the dryline and dryline/pacific front merger over the srn plains as well as farther east in the warm sector. Severe threat will likely spread ewd into the lower ms valley area by later thursday afternoon and evening.

Firefighter Thomas Rogers recorded this video of a tumbleweed tornado that helps spread a controlled fire beyond what was originally intended. Taken at a wildlife refuge in Denver, Colorado, several fire teams were at hand to help control the blaze. "Prescribed burn of 150 acres at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Denver, CO. Participating agencies: USFWS, USFS, South Metro Fire, West Metro Fire, Denver Fire, Fairmount Fire. A dust devil formed and drew the prescribed fire into it. It crossed the line and burned about 1 additional acre."

OKLAHOMA CITY – A burglary quickly turned into a chase Monday afternoon, but this time, it wasn’t police trailing the criminals; it was the victim. ***snip*** Perhaps more brazen, the criminals came back for seconds just as police left the house with the first report. Sanders heard a truck rounding a corner with his trailer connected to the back. A former Marine, the man wasn’t going to hold back when he saw the thieves. He jumped into his truck and started chasing the burglars. “I think that’s just part of his personality,” said Hayley. “That’s why he signed up for...

It's the holidays so why not a feel good story to start your day? The tornado that ripped through Washington, Illinois 9 days ago claimed only one life, thank goodness. But National Guardsman Jacob Montgomery believed he had lost his beloved puppy Dexter in the storm. Then, a miracle: A guard spokesman says a neighbor sent Montgomery a Facebook message nine days later to tell him Dexter had been found under debris where the apartment used to be. An animal rescuing organization had coaxed the 6-month-old puppy out of the rubble with hot dogs. A veterinarian found Dexter to be...

A large tornado tore through Washington, Ill., east of Peoria on Sunday, the National Weather Service said, part of a dangerous line of fast-moving storms that ripped through the Midwest

7:52 p.m. A second tornado may be forming southwest Cherokee, according to the National Weather Service. Residents are urged to take cover. 7:49 p.m. A funnel cloud has been spotted near Essex in southwest Iowa. Red Oak, Elliott, Grant and Coburg could be effected. A tornado warning is in effect for parts of Mills, Page, Montgomery and Pottawattamie counties. 7:39 p.m. A severe storm that caused major damage in Quimby is headed toward Cherokee, according to the National Weather Service. The storm was spotted at about 7:30 near Quimby. It’s expected to reach Cherokee at about 7:45 p.m. This storm...

What if your home could protect itself from dangerous weather  by retreating underground automatically long before it hits? If you think about it, a house -or entire neighborhood/town- that could withstand higher winds than boxy, frail wood structures -and actually hide underground if necessary- could have one heck of a lot of applications: not just in tornado alley, but avoiding fires in California, tsunamis in Japan, or of course hurricane season in the Carolinas. Why build an expensive underground shelter only to watch your house and belongings be scraped from the face of the Earth, washed-away, or turned to...

Dozens of young campers at the Sports World complex in East Windsor huddled under tables as a violent storm tore away the domed portion of the building near Interstate 91 on Monday afternoon. None of the children was injured, but the storm did widespread damage in the area. Part of the dome was blown into traffic the highway, trees were toppled into houses, tobacco netting was tangled around power lines and a tractor trailer was knocked over nearby. On Monday night, the National Weather Service confirmed that the storm contained a tornado. The tornado hit the Windsor Locks area between...

<p>OKLAHOMA CITY- Some tornado victims, who lost their homes, fear that they may not be able to re-build. Rhonda Northcutt said she is unable to get a building permit from the city because of where her home was located before it was destroyed.</p>

...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...