More misery for thousands hit by Oklahoma tornado as running water has been shut off and storms are on the way
Tornado-hit Oklahoma is bracing itself for a third day of storms today as it emerged the devastated suburb of Moore remains without running water in the wake of yesterday's carnage.
At least 91 people were killed and more than 230 injured when the twister struck at about 3pm yesterday, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
With rescuers continuing their desperate search for survivors in the early hours, engineers were battling to restore vital water supplies.
Nightmare scenario: The clean-up and rescue operations in Oklahoma are likely to be hampered by yet more severe weather. Forecasters are predicting the same front which spawned yesterday's deadly twister is likely to strike againDevastation: To make matters worse, the southern suburb of Moore, which was worst hit by yesterday's storm, is still without running water
Deadly: The 200mph tornado destroyed everything in its path
The clean-up and rescue operation is likely to be disrupted on Tuesday, though, as forecasters warned the state more severe weather is on the way.
More tornadoes, powerful thunderstorms and damaging hail is expected to scythe through the area from the same weather system that created yesterday's 200mph winds.
Large swathes of the town of Moore were utterly devastated by the stormAn area from Dallas to Little Rock, Arkansas, has the greatest chance of severe weather, while a portion of the central U.S. from Michigan to Texas is at risk, according to the U.S. Storm Prediction Center.
'The real areas of concern are Arkansas, northern Louisiana and northeastern Texas, where you could have the most damaging storms,' said Christopher Vaccaro, spokesman for the National Weather Service in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The Moore storm 'is certainly on the high end of the scale' in terms of destructiveness, he said.
Oklahoma City has been struck by tornadoes more times than any other place in the U.S., according to government data.
Yesterday’s storm came the day after two people were killed and 39 injured in separate storms in the state.
At least 30 tornadoes were reported on May 19 from Illinois to Oklahoma.
The exact strength of yesterday’s storm won’t be known until a survey team inspects the damage in the coming days, said John Pike, a spokesman with the weather service in Norman, Oklahoma, about 10 miles south of Moore.
Preliminary indications were that it was at least an EF-4 tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, said Ryan Barnes, a weather service meteorologist. That’s the second-most-powerful classification on the six-step rankings and means the cyclone had wind gusts of 166 to 200 miles (267 to 322 kilometers) per hour for three seconds.
Classification is based on damage, not actual wind measurements.
Here are the paths of tornadoes over the years in the Moore, Oklahoma area: Red: 1999, Blue: 2003, Green: 2013Apocalyptic scene: Yesterday's tornado was a mile-wide
Tornadoes can last from several seconds to more than an hour, with the most storms breaking up within 10 minutes, according to the storm center.
The swath of devastation shown on television is consistent with an EF-5 tornado, the most powerful kind, with winds of at least 200 miles per hour, said Mark Hoekzema, chief meteorologist for Earth Networks in Germantown, Maryland.
'From everything that I have seen it is undoubtedly an EF-5 and it is one of the worst ones I have seen,' Hoekzema said. 'This appears to have been very wide and to have gone through a substantially populated area.'
There were only 58 EF-5 tornadoes recorded in the U.S. between 1950 and 2011, according to the storm center. About 1,300 tornadoes hit the country every year.
Severe thunderstorms killed 118 people in the U.S. last year and caused an estimated $27.7 billion in economic losses, second only to hurricanes and tropical storms among natural disasters, according to the Insurance Information Institute of New York.