I was living in Moore at that time and was just leaving my daughter with a babysitter. I had listened to Gary England’s voice for years and this time was very different, you could hear and feel the concern in his voice, I couldn’t leave my daughter, I took her home and said to my husband who grew up in Maryland “We need to go, now”. We drove to my brother’s house and got in the shelter with his wife and kids. We sat wide eyed in that cellar as the horrible roaring sound of the tornado went by. One block over got the most damage. I’ll never forget that day and seeing the horrible aftermath of destruction and hearing families life changing stories.
Except where he said get between the stool and the wall. I had no idea what he meant there. Maybe it's a oklahoma thing, but I don't keep a stool in my bathroom, unless he was referring to stool, as in the stool that's in a toilet. But that was kind of confusing if you wanted to know the truth
Bridge Creeker here. This monster hit half mile south of our home. The homes at the end of our road weren't demolished, they were gone. Our community was never mentioned until after this day. We lost 13 people and hundreds of injuries. Our school was turned into a triage center and morgue. It took years to recover. A day we will never forget.😢
My friends lost their newborn baby this day and the mother in law. The father in law & my 2 friends were almost killed. My momma held Baby Ashton on Sunday at church then just days later he was back where he was sent from. They had more children however now divorced. Her scars are a forever reminder of how lucky they all are. Tornadoes like these don’t happen to often thank God but when they do, they deserve respect.
I moved to Oklahoma in 1999, I fell in love with Gary England during a broadcast when he said " now for you kids that are home alone......." you could tell that he genuinely cared - he wasn't just about ratings he was about safety!
@@PublicAtLarge Dave Freeman did the same with his coverage of the May 4th, 2007 tornado that devastated Greensburg, Kansas. Dave was the chief meteorologist for KSNW; the NBC station in Wichita, KS at the time of the Greensburg tornado and he urged any kids who might be home alone or with a babysitter that they had to be brave and turn the volume on the TV or the computer speakers or the radio so they could hear him as they took shelter. Dave Freeman, James Spann, Gary England, Mike Morgan and Damon Lane are the five meteorologists for whom I have high levels of respect.
@@jeffvanschoonhoven5171 Oh absolutely. I would also add in Jamie Simpson for his coverage of the Memorial Day tornado that tore through Dayton, Ohio in 2019. Viewers who were watching a new episode of "The Bachelorette" on Fox 45 complained about how the coverage of the tornado had interrupted the show; but Jamie was having none of it and ripped into viewers on air.
Gary retired about 3 months after the 2013 El Reno tornado, but he had been OKC's trusted voice since the early 1970's. He even made a cameo in the movie Twister where they used archived footage of him that Jo's Father was watching just before the F5 arrived. He even had a premonition after Moore was hit by the F4 in 2003. He said an EF5 was going to strike within the OKC Metro Area when schools were letting out kids, calling it the worst-case scenario, and guaranteed it would happen. On May 20th, 2013, what he said 10 years prior transpired in Moore. Unfortunately, 7 children were killed at Plaza Towers (damage was labeled EF4 for the school) where the EF5 tornado was inflicting EF5 damage to a few homes a couple of blocks to the North of both Briarwood and Plaza Towers.
It's great for people who love to study weather and natural disasters to watch coverage of the May 3, 1999 tornado that tore through Moore, Oklahoma provided by Oklahoma City's CBS affiliate KWTV Channel 9 and hear the familiar comforting voice of the station's chief meteorologist Gary England. Gary guided many residents of Oklahoma through the many violent and destructive tornadoes that tore through the state and always made sure to let kids who were either at home alone or with a babysitter and no doubt scared to death know that if they listen to him they will survive. I have reason to believe that the kids who have listened to Gary England are moms and dads themselves and use his advice to keep their own kids safe.
Why would they not run this at the time, makes no sense to archive,then revive years later , now a days we share live, IMO that can save lives, I posted hurricanes live , then people see the threat and take very serious
This reminds me of my childhood, my dad always told me if I was home alone and severe weather was happening to go in his room and turn on the radio and move the dial until I hear Gary England. I miss Gary.
I have watched every single video the net has to offer on this tornado...This is the very first time I have seen ch.9's full broadcast of this terrible day. Thank you for adding this!
@@darrylclaxton7473 OMG yes! I think the news anchors say it is a woman not a man though either way it's horrific. Even dirt is a deadly weapon in a 250mph+ wind its as good as a sand blaster. Debarks trees, hell it even scours out the ground as deep as 2 feet.
@@nosilee2964I’m just now seeing your comment and you’re absolutely CORRECT! To this day I’ve never seen such a well defined radar signature Unbelievable the power that thing had it even brought down the wall cloud with it 😩
27:54 To hear GARY ENGLAND say in 1999 "I don't ever recall anything exactly like this." is chilling. There's almost a sense of helplessness in his voice. He was drawing from nearly 40 years of experience at that time. It is difficult to explain to people who didn't live through it just how jaw dropping this tornado was. It's astonishing the death toll wasn't much higher, and it is a direct result of outstanding coverage the OKC teams provided that day.
Had a good friend of mine that was badly injured by it even after getting in a bathtub to ride it out. He lived just west of Tinker AFB south of S.E. 29th St. in an area that later was surveyed to have EF4 damage. Took 3 days to finally locate him in an area hospital because of the mass confusion there. He passed away from long term complications a couple of years ago as a result of the encounter. RIP Earl Talley.
“If you’re above ground and in the path of this tornado, you’re going to die”, is what Gary England, the channel 9 weatherman said. I grabbed my mom and wife and went into a shelter. Many homes, one block to the East and West my house were completely swept off their foundations.
Val & Amy Castor are legendary chasers. The whole crew at KWTV are amazing. Again thank KWTV for the hard work you all do and thank you Chief Meteorologist David Payne for all you do.
I worked for a TV station in Austin, TX in may 1999. Our chief meteorologist and one of our producers ended up in Moore that day covering the outbreak, ended up saving the life of someone whom was critically injured.
A person cannot begin to imagine what it’s like to live through something like this. I was in a F-4 tornado when I was seven years old. It traumatizes you. You never ever forget.
I'd be really interested in which tornado u were in and anything you'd be comfortable sharing I've been interested in tornadoes since I was in third grade when the Andover hit F5 and everyone caught it on video and saw one unexpectedly in Florida 96 and it was on the other side of the highway while I was going on a vacation with my family and although I always wanted to see one but I was hoping to expect it like chasers..... when I first saw it it freaked me out I looked away almost like it didn't exist if I didn't look at it Then my dad reminded me how I've always wanted to see one so I opened my eyes again and watch the final stages of it rope out which all together was on the ground for less than 5 minutes but wasn't expecting it and that's a big difference than chasing them and just seeing one while driving through a storm in a state you're not from forgetting which direction you're in correlation to it but back then my father was I guess I always felt safe when he was driving no matter what was happening but I know a lot of people know what I mean But seriously any story I could hear that hasn't been told publicly a million times I'd love to hear and I don't mean to publish I'm just personally curious if you feel like telling the story on here or something
I was freaked out by the 3 mile miss by a tornado that was ef2 closest to me. I got no warning and it was 4 in the morning. It destroyed multiple steel buildings at ef3 strength and sent a good bit of people to the hospital. So it makes sense to be worried. But that little tiny baby is nothing. If you had them next to each other you wouldn’t even notice it. Something like this is too much for my brain to handle. It’s so big and so powerful you can’t do anything to save yourself other than get underground.
So true. When I was 5 years old my family and I lived through a direct hit by a strong F3 tornado. It remains the scariest night of my life. The trauma of that experience worsened as I got older until my parents sought out professional help for me, which helped immensely. Living through one of these monsters haunts you in ways you don't expect. I can't imagine what it would be like to live through an EF4 or worse, an EF5. In addition those who live in this area of Oklahoma have experienced this several times now. I admire their resilience and courage, I would live in a perpetual state of fear.
@@Carolinagirl1028 I’m glad you were able to get some help. Unfortunately I wasn’t. And like you said it’s something that stays with you forever. Ever since I went through that tornado I am deathly afraid of storms because you just never know.
@@blaine8274 I'll take that as a sign you don't want to tell your story then because if you posted it here I would certainly read it but maybe it's none of my business I can tell you my experiences but none of them were tragic
Cannot imagine what that woman went through. I live in the northeastern US, in NY State, and even I cannot imagine what that woman probably had to go through. That’s selfish of those neighbors.
There's a chance that the people in the shelter were physically unable to open the shelter. I remember hearing a story about the 2013 tornado where a woman came out of her shelter crying because someone was banging on her shelter, but she wasn't physically strong enough to open the door against the force of the storm
@thegreyghost5846 thank you. I tried opening my door to go downstairs, and i couldn't. That was an f2 wind intensity. I was absolutely terrified. If i seen THIS, bye
Today *May 3rd, 2023* marks 24 years since the Oklahoma tornado, Prayers go out to people who are still coping with the loss of loved ones and all the people who helped after the storm. Remember NEVER go under an overpass to try and avoid a tornado, Winds actually accelerate under there, The best thing to do in get to a tornado shelter underground chances of surviving the tornado are higher underground
We didn’t lose anyone but our 2 dogs were in this thing and amazingly both survived. One of them was found by a man we had known for years and another was picked up by a lady and taken to a shelter. Still very grateful to both of them for essentialy saving our dogs and giving them 7 more years with us.
This very tornado almost 25 years later still holds the record for highest wind speeds ever recorded on earth. It peaked in Bridge Creek at 318 mph. Gary England was the chief meteorologist at News 9 in OKC for 40 years. He’s considered by many to be the best meteorologist ever. I was born and raised in Newcastle. One of the towns that got hit by this tornado. This is the only time I ever recalled him being flustered during a storm. Whenever someone like him says “You need to be below ground. You will not survive this if you’re not below ground.”, it makes you realize how much of a monster this tornado was. May 3rd still is and will probably always be the baddest tornado in US history.
I've watched this many times, and here I am again on the anniversary of this horrible storm. Rest in Peace to those who lost their lives on that awful day. There are a lot of us who will never forget.
This saved lives , the historic event with Gary and his TEAM gave a fleeing population eyes above as it happened , providing the listener some degree of working intel like a military exercise . As I listened to this event live You could feel the concern on every reporting chasers voice , brought chills to the meer hearing its description . It being cloaked in clouds must have seemed enormously unreal in size and scope.This news reporting team needs to be commended for its value to its community , an award giving ceremony to show hard hitting reporting , period .
They are. They are regarded as some of if not the best outside abc in Alabama for severe coverage and tornado coverage. Although, Gary has now retired this footage and coverage is historic for this kind of an event.
@@ASLLover666 36 direct deaths, +5 indirect deaths. This tornado sadly had a very high casualty count. This thing has an eerie resemblance to the Phil-Campbell EF5 of 2011, it's even heavily rain wrapped with a very low-hanging wall cloud like that monster was.
@@ASLLover666 This one was very long-tracked at 38 miles and was on the ground for almost 1 hour and 30 minutes. Not only did it destroy parts of Moore, but it also nearly wiped out amber and bridge-creek. This is one of the worst tornadoes recorded in modern history.
I turned 33 the next month. 4th generation Oklahoman who had watched Gary England from childhood. Was between Ada and Shawnee watching this. When Gary said "You NEED to be below ground!" my blood ran cold.
@Pat Luxor Pat, “Luxor” get ahold of yourself! Your psychosis is showing. That’s what following a white rabbit will do to you. Enter rabbit holes at the risk of your own sanity. Read your Bible and trust God only.
@@Nwsthe2ndweatheeforecaster She is still here to type what she did, so it worked. Not trying to be a smart a$$, just saying sometimes you do the best you can with what you have.
I was 13 years old when this happened .I didn't live in Oklahoma but I was a big weather buff as a kid and I remember this event live from watching the weather channel.
Ohhhh no. I was crying at the lady who's neighbor wouldn't let them in then seen this comment and cackled. 😂 I am so sure it wasn't meant to be funny at all but thank you for sharing. I hope they visit at some point. ❤
It's incredible to me how many people got hit by this tornado in Moore. Look at the advanced warning everyone had. Always be weather aware, the weather can literally change your life forever.
25 years ago today, my aunt and uncle moved into their new home in Moore, Oklahoma. And within a few hours, they watched this tornado roar by a few blocks away (they were never hit, but it was close). Rip to the ones who lost their lives.
I was in Bridge Creek at this time. We were picking up one of my older cousins because he was going to come visit. I remember seeing the clouds rotating. We left literally minutes before the tornado hit Bridge Creek. Suffice to say, it was pretty terrifying watching rotating clouds out the rear window of a tiny pickup.
Oh my! At least you guys had the firm but comforting voice of Gary England. I'm from Ohio and I have a lot of respect for Gary because he has been a guiding light for many people in Oklahoma during many violent and destructive tornadoes. If there's anything I wish; I wish that Gary England and James Spann were covering the EF5 tornado that tore through Joplin, Missouri on May 22, 2011. If James and Gary were covering the Joplin tornado there is no doubt in my mind that they would have been able to save many lives.
@@michaellovely6601 TH-cam search first person video Joplin tornado. It is video from people who took shelter in a gas station store freezer and is some of the most terrifying tornado videos you will see/hear. There is an aftermath one too where they show the destroyed building. The freezer was the only thing that “partially” made it. Everyone in the freezer survived.
@@fitfogey I remember seeing this video in an episode of a show on The Weather Channel called "Real Time Tornado" which profiled the Joplin, Missouri tornado. It was shot inside the FasTrip gas station by a guy named Isaac Duncan.
@@fitfogey That it was. I have not only seen the episode of "Real Time Tornado" which profiled the Joplin, Missouri EF5 tornado; but I have also seen the episodes which profiled the tornadoes that struck Tuscaloosa Alabama, Henryville Indiana, Hattiesburg Mississippi, Moore Oklahoma, and Washington, Illinois. A truly inspiring story from the Henryville, IN tornado on March 2nd, 2012 is that of a school bus driver named Angel Perry. Angel was just a few miles away from the Henryville school complex when she spotted the tornado and immediately fell back on her training to ensure the safety of the children in her care. Angel knew that the safest place for her and her students was the Henryville school complex; so she turned around and hurried back to the school. After counting off the students as they ran for their lives into the office area of Henryville Elementary School; Angel hurried into the building herself. Her bus was the one that got hurled into a diner across the street from the school. In the episode on the Moore, Oklahoma tornado on May 20th, 2013; a truly inspiring story is that of a man named Sam Peña. Sam displayed nearly superhuman abilities to keep his son Benji along with several of Benji's friends and classmates safe by using all of his physical strength to hold up a cinder block wall as they took shelter from the storm in a boys bathroom of Briarwood Elementary School. Watching the episode on the Washington, Illinois tornado left me feeling shocked because of the day the tornado occurred: November 17th, 2013. You really don't expect a tornado to strike in late November; and as a result the residents of Washington had gone from being excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas to a sense of heartbreak and helplessness. To add to their misery it snowed a week after the tornado; which as you can imagine hindered cleanup efforts. What is so surprising about the EF4 tornado which struck Hattiesburg, Mississippi on February 10th, 2013 is that no fatalities occurred and only eighty-two people were injured. This tornado badly damaged or destroyed many businesses and vehicles on Hardy Street and Oak Grove Road in downtown Hattiesburg along with numerous homes and damaging residence halls on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. Not many students or faculty members of USM were on campus because they had gone down to New Orleans, Louisiana for Mardi Gras weekend as Hattiesburg isn't too far from New Orleans.
First time seeing KWTV's full coverage from this event. The KFOR coverage has been available for a long time and I've watched it multiple times. My takeaway from the differences, KFOR went wall to wall with metro area damage reporting after the Moore/MWC tornado dissipated largely ignoring the rest of the ongoing weather events, while KWTV stayed with severe weather coverage on all the rest of the multuple tornadic storms throughout the viewing area before turning to damage reporting. This decision by KWTV likely saved multiple lives across Oklahoma outside of the OKC metro that day.
I grew up in NW Oklahoma we usually only watch KWTV out there because they are the ones that will keep us covered. As an adult we actually have a KWTV storm chaser that lives out near Woodward and keeps them covered and updates his Facebook page with it. He also keeps our wildfires covered. Everyone in the NW knows Marty Logan.
Gary England was a honorable man, a genuine good human, he cared more about his impact on safety then money ..money never changed him. He never had allegations against him. He was amazing 👏 he's a part of Oklahoma history!
This was my third birthday here in Lawton. I remember being at the lake with my family, then being at my grandma's eating cake, then waking up later that evening in my mom's closet. I started crying and calling for mom and somewhere out of the dark my brother told me the power was out. I remember we didn't have power for awhile and all the power lines were laid out on the roads.
I survived this monster. I still live in Moore, even after all of this. Gary England told everyone to get underground or you wouldn't survive this. I'm grateful for my neighbor, at the time, for rounding up everyone on the block and getting us to safety in her storm cellar. As soon as those doors closed, the sirens went off.
What made this outbreak so dangerous was the setup. I'm going to explain a few things on the set up The jet stream was very powerful set directly over Oklahoma, powerful low pressure storm to the northwest centered close to Colorado. Dew points were well into the 70s and 80s, CAPE(Convective Available Potential Energy) values were off the charts at 6000J/kg (Joules per kilogram) Dry line set far western Oklahoma. For those that don't know what a Dry line is. A Dry line is the area that separates warm moist humid air from the dry cooler air aka the battle zone for the storms. These storms stayed isolated super cells instead of becoming a QLCS(Quasi Linear Convective System) aka Squall line. In a squall line scenario, each imbedded supercell is fighting for that energy to thrive which makes the tornado potential go down significantly but they can still happen. I can keep going on with the explanation but that's the basics of why and how.
Thank you for the explanation! I didn't know the difference between isolated cells and the QLCS you described. I live in Minnesota, and I mostly see the type of thunderstorms that form a squall line.
It all came together after 200 pm. In the early morning hours the set up wasn't very apparent. What really sealed the deal was some breaks in the clouds and an approaching jet streak that wasn't known until it was samples by Doppler profiler (upward facing radars) networks. And that didn't occur until around 1 in the afternoon. I'm not even sure computer modeling in this day and age would have done much better with that rather anomalous set up.
You know everyone always talks about the sound tornadoes make, the ol' freight train cliche, but you know what hardly anyone ever talks about? The smell. The smell. All that churned up dirt and broken tree limbs and pine two by fours and insulation and ozone and mud and people's lives and homes and ground up together....if you have never smelled it you couldn't possibly imagine what it's like and if you have lived through it you can never forget it
Walking outside into the darkness, like darker than ever and seeing ambient light showing me snapped power lines what comes to my mind. Then comes firefighters with flashlights from a distance while you watch h their lights get closer. I was also next to the tornado west of El Reno during this broadcast. Went to check on my parents and nobody was there. I had a 79 Camaro doing 100 behind a cop with his lights blaring I was one of few on the road getting back to my apartment that was very close to this.
What was always eerie to me is how silent everything gets after it's all over. That's what I remember when my dad's house was hit in the 2013 Moore tornado. The silence afterwards
No other state, city or country’s live weather broadcast can ever compare to Oklahoma City in terms of tech, experience and overall seriousness. Gary England, Mike Morgan, David Payne, Reed timmer, Val castor, and everyone else THANK YOU!!!!! Home town heroes
He was pretty cool back then. But... lol. Do yourself a favor and don't look up what he's been up to lately. I'll spare your feelings and not spell it out here. Maybe old age is just a curse.
@@Asterra2 huh? I don’t see that he’s been up to anything controversial. The only thing remotely controversial I can find that he’s ever done was back in like 2007, saying that climate change was natural (as opposed to man-made), but remember that at the time many people did not believe that climate change was occurring at all… so by comparison, Gary’s position is quite reasonable.
@@TheLocalLt He spends his time on Twitter mirroring tweets with anti-vax, anti-mask, and yes, climate denial messages. I just shrug when one senile old man howls at the moon that he knows better than the scientific body about the climate (even if, fundamentally, he is just aping the horseshit his conservative bubble is feeding him), but when a person with a lot of followers says dangerous things about public health, he causes deaths. That's pretty damn inexcusable.
David payne couldn't carry Gary's jock strap, weather predictions have fallen off since the old guys have retired and the just regurgitate computer models
I was in the 8th grade when this storm hit. I was in south norman and I could hear a rumble like I've never heard. My uncle was extremely lucky living in Moore. He was just out of the damage. If you stood on his porch and looked right there was minor damage. Looked left and 7 house down were completely gone.
25:30 power flashes. 34:40 Fort Cobb live tornado shot, black as night. 35:25 tornado warning Okarche. 35:50 live shot Okarche tornado. 36:30 & 37:00 damage path Ranger 9 helicopter. 38:35 Close-up video Newcastle area. 40:50 long video. 42:14 power flashes and sirens going off in Moore. Times approximate. Lead-in time on all numbers. I am just doing this for my reference. This is a very informing video channel 9 has put together. 48:10 Val Castor video following tornado on 149th street. I do not hear anything about the debris ball. Maybe we did not have that capability in 1999. But in the hook area I can see a RED ball in the hook on the radar. 55:30 damage path. 1:50:54 incredible sight, residents walking in a line to go somewhere to stay. This was an ugly ugly storm. Awful.
One of the most violent and concentrated weather events on the planet. Majestic and horrible all at the same time. Those poor people in its path had their whole lives upheaved by this monster, some literally.
I moved to South OKC about 3 1/2 years ago in an area that was leveled by this tornado. It’s crazy to think that less than 25 years ago, this place was wiped out and then got smacked again roughly 10 years ago. How this area just builds back better is just astonishing.
I really don't understand why people rebuild in the same spot or why anyone would move into an area 2 massive tornadoes have leveled in the past. Seems like a pretty bad idea.
@@Douglas_I There’s an obvious reason to be hesitant and aware of that. But I wouldn’t let fear of natural disasters be what dictates where I’m gonna live. If we all lived like that, coastal cities would be empty. California would be empty. Earthquakes, hurricanes, & tornadoes can’t be your reason for where you choose to live and plant your roots.
This is more gripping and terrifying than any Hollywood rendition of storms and tornadoes. I got chills at 35:25 when there was so much information incoming and he's trying to triage and parse out the most important information for the viewers to get them to safety. Amazing work because I would have been an absolute mess. I saw one once from afar while going to school in southeast Missouri and now I am safely tucked in southern California. I will take wild fires, earthquakes and mentally ill homeless over one of those tornadic beasts any day!
02:35:25 How can anyone be so cruel, hateful , apathetic, uncompassionate and heartless to deny shelter to neighbors in the time of such a severe and dangerous storm????
She probably couldn't open the cellar door. Just my two cents. I had an f2 50 feet from me. I tried going downstairs for help. I live in an upstairs apartment. Yikes. That door would not open. I heard my window break too. This tornado would have killed me immediately. The wind suction was so incredible i couldn't open my door, and if i did, id have been in bad shape. It. It feels like a suction cup
Finally, after nearly 24 years we have the full picture. This day defined my path in life. I grew up in Midwest City, and experiencing that power up close created a passion for weather unmatched by anything else. What an event. Gary was my hero growing up. Thanks for posting this, y'all.
As a metrology enthusiast I'm fascinated by this storm, yet feel bad for the families and everyone involved... The damage looks like a place that was bombed or bulldozed! This storm was basically 2x stronger than a category 5 hurricane!
I remember being stuck on the road while this was happening as a kid while My dad my brother and I were driving from Abilene to Kansas that evening.... I don't know how fast a 1991 Pontiac Grand Am was Supposed to go but I'm pretty sure we found out while we heard about this developing on the radio, the sky began to get dark and he scrambled to get us all into shelter, I remember him screaming into a brick gas station about the time it was raining too hard to see anything more than general shapes with the wipers on full speed and trees were already starting to buckle. We lost power about 45 seconds after the manager helped us into the safest part of the building. Wild memory for sure.
This was terrifying. I lived in a complex off shields in Moore. It luckily didnt destroy too much. But it was terrifying for me and my toddler. I was in another one there in 2013, i think.
There’s just something about watching older raw weather footage. I was 11, moving back to my hometown of noble from Vegas. I’ll never forget the sky that day. Moore was literally unrecognizable. This is why Mr. England is the Jordan of weather.
As a non-US: I've been watching videos, reviews, coverages, documentaries, storm chaser dashcam footages, reading Wikipedia's and comments about tornadoes, mostly about EF5s, for days now. Every EF5 has created its own terrifying, but also fascinating biblical myth around itself. First and foremost, I've been mostly drenched down about all the lives that were lost in all of them. Every time I've heard and read about whole families and children being killed somewhere down there I felt nothing but gut-wrenched and truly saddened. Imagining the sheer horror and terror of wind speeds well above 200, 250, even 300mph, ripping down houses around them while approaching the very own location steadily, must be one of the worst experiences of Mother Nature you can ever endure. And if this being horrific wasn't enough, it unravels being heartbreakingly tragic in the aftermath. I couldn't stop reading and watching so much about every single one of them. I felt terrified by all of them. This one right here, the May 3rd F5, had reached F5 intensity three times over its lifespan. I can't think of a more torturing tornado, maybe growing hopes by noise that it's may be decreasing and finally dissipating. Only to grow back, almost as if in rage, to EF5 intensity over and over again. Another terrifying aspect: Especially the Moore/El Reno/Oklahoma City area seems to be the Bermuda Triangle on Earth's surface. It's almost devilish that four of the most violent EF5's ever recorded happened here. Rest in Peace to everyone who had lost their life and loved ones in any tornado. I especially want to say all my prayers to all the children that had lost their lives. Thank you to all the weather reporters. You have contributed to saving lives!
An Oklahoma tornado located in Woodward in 1947 that killed over 100 people was the tornado that prompted the beginning of the storm warning system to provide for time to get to safety. If that event hadn’t have happened I cannot imagine how many deaths OKC would’ve had. With as terrible as this tornado was the death toll was low.
I can't myself! Everytime I don't have anything to do, I pull this video up and watch the entire thing over again. This is a storm of a lifetime. You have a mesocyclone (the rotating part of the storm) that is every bit of 5 miles in diameter and shoots 6 miles straight into the sky like a huge cylinder of cloud. No one has ever seen this! Before or since! The storm is so wrapped up in the high, mid and low levels it doesnt lose its shape and form through its entire life and travel of well over 100 miles! Just boom! Staight up into the sky! Under the storm, in the low level sheer, the tornado itself goes from multi vortex,to near 2 mile wide wedge, to twins, to stove pipe and...has anyone EVER seen a wall cloud dip so low? I'll bet at times it isnt 800 feet off the ground. Yeah, this is a once in a lifetime deal...At least you hope it is. Loss of life is so low in this event compared to F5 tornados in other states because ya'll understand tornados in Oklahoma. Your spotters and meteorologists knew enough to ditch the "first floor center of the house" advise and went straight to "underground or LEAVE". I do have to admit, I'm still a little pissed at the criticisim Mike Morgan faced when he gave the same advice in 2013 for the Moore EF5 and ElReno monster...some thrill seeking stormchasing bone head I will call"Skippy Tallobit " actually stated he cause a panic traffic jam...Which is funny because it was actually storm chasers that caused an El Reno man to lose his life by cramming up his exit route. I digress...I'm still furious about that.
28:26 that lone circle to the West of Newcastle is what we call today a TDS (Tornado Debris Signature) or simply a debris ball. If we had today's updated radar, I can't imagine how pink/lavender it would have been.
I lived in Westmoore Edition off Santa Fe across from Plaza Towers. I remember this day. I was in 9th grade at the time. When I watched it from the backyard I couldn't make out what it was. I just saw this giant grey mass of cloud slowly moving towards us. I remember we were out of school for about a week or two. I recall they canceled all our finals and we pretty much all got to graduate with ease. Me and some friends walked from school back to our neighborhood. We saw cars all over the place, what looked like ducks that were splattered against a brick wall, pieces of straw stuck into telephone poles, and buildings flattened all over. We didn't get hit by this one but the 2013 tornado hit us. The house collapsed a few days afterwards.
I've seen that in a lot of documentaries on this outbreak. I've always been fascinated by tornadoes since the movie Twister came out... but this tornado, and the others that cropped up looked vicious
I remember the flurry of documentaries and the global coverage this got. It was front and center on the BBC's news for the third and fourth, and they sent a camera crew to spend a week in OKC I think it was, there's footage on TH-cam of one of the journalists sitting down with Gary in the weather center which is far more entertaining than it should be. So thanks News 9, and I've been keeping a count of how many documentaries featured this coverage. I'm up to at least 20-25 just off the top of my head. Comparing this to even the 2003 coverage, or earlier coverage on YT, it's amazing how far the technology has come along year on year. Also that choppper pilot has amazing flying skills. Anyone that can keep a copter in the air in that sort of environment is absolutely amazing with any sort of aircraft.
That's Jim Gardner. Gary England has retired, but Jim is still flying that chopper helping his fellow citizens. I can't imagine who could carry the mantle once he steps down. All the storm coverage I've seen with him flying around tracking everything for so long & just how well he does it. It is certainly a tall order for anyone to follow in his flight path.
@@NoNames-vw3bq Leroy Tatom was News 9 for this day reportedly. Gardner flew for local competitor KFOR (Channel 4) until KWTV replaced their other pilot (not Tatom, but Mason Dunn) for... dubious reasons.
I am 26 years old. I was 3 years old when this happened. I was in MWC with my mother in a shelter and it just barely missed us. I clearly don’t remember a thing, but I have done so much research. I have compared this storm to the may 20th 2013 tornado, and I’ve seen all the internet has to offer. There is a lot of information that I just didn’t have until I watched this. I am EXTREMELY impressed with Gary England and I still haven’t seen anyone who measures up to this man. Everything about the way he handled this just screams professionalism, like he was made for it.
Holy crap I've watched this video before but I don't remember seeing that crazy footage! The person filming that must have nerves of steel! The violence we're seeing there is just unbelievable!
OMG, poor Newcastle and Moore! And from what I've read, not many homes there were built with basements. And that's something that shouldn't be acceptable given the area's history. I can't imagine anything above ground-even a safe room being able to stand up to a tornado like this EF-5 monster!
@@jonathanbecker8935 you can’t affordably build basements in Texas and Oklahoma because the soil is shallow and bedrock is right underneath. Storm shelters are about the best you can do without using TNT
THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! Didn’t think I’d ever get to see this coverage! I was 13 at the time of this storm, I don’t remember hearing much about it at the time because I grew up in Boston, but because of the Movie Twister I was already HOOKED on tornadoes. They continue to fascinate me to this day. Especially being an Atheist, so I look at it more in terms of a scientific POV and not a religious one. I was deployed to a combat AOR with a guy from Oklahoma (right outside bridge creek to be exact I believe) and he told me it was far more terrifying than any deployment he had ever taken!! Gary England is A LEGEND, not just to Oklahomans but to anyone who love’s/studies tornadoes!! He along with James Spann in Alabama are my two personal favorites for both their knowledge as well as their personalities on air!! Again THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! Being a fully disabled combat veteran and being stuck at home the overwhelming majority of the time due to both financial and physical reasons this is an AMAZING AND UNEXPECTED GIFT!!
Check out the Jarrell documentary. And look into the Phil Campbell tornado too if you haven't seen them. Tristate tornado. Woodward, Oklahoma got hit with an F5 in 1947 that killed 107 people - this was the 3rd tornado from the single storm cell that tracked from Texas, through Oklahoma & into Kansas before finally weakening enough about midway through Kansas to cease dropping tornadoes.
Thank you for your service. That said, how in any way is your being an atheist relevant to this? Are you under the impression Christian tornado chasers use their own scientific measurements, like from the Bible or something?
@@TheLocalLt No I mention it because you ALWAYS hear “christians” talking about their “god’s plan” and whenever a tornado strikes somewhere and kills people you’ll still hear people saying “god saved them” and the tornado missed a certain house or building and they thank god, meanwhile a block up the road an infant just died after being sucked out of their mother’s arms….so I am simply pointing out that I realize those things happen due to atmospheric conditions and different factors, and NOT because one person “prayed harder” or because they prayed to the “right god”.
@@TheLocalLt They never waste an opportunity to attempt to project their “superiority”; never knowing that the foundation of science is rooted within religion. Roger Bacon and Pope Clement IV come to mind.
I’m from SC and spent most of my adult life in VA. I never experienced a tornado before. I feel sorry for yall that were kids during this time and went through this. I know the trauma still lingers, I pray you all recover over the years. I’m 35 now and I remember seeing this on the news.
my mom was around 20 years old and getting her hair done while this storm occurred. she was watching it on the tv the whole time, her grandparents lived in the direct path of this tornado. when she got her hair done, she ran home. of course the power lines were down so she couldnt get ahold of her grandparents, but she watched news 9’s coverage the whole night, until dawn. she tells me she saw emergency services hauling a woman into the hospital with a 2x4 lodged into her forehead, on live tv. i cant imagine. about her grandparents, thank god, they lived and their house was missed by the tornado by a literal hair. two houses down from theirs, the tornado passed and wiped the rest of their neighborhood. mom tells me her granddad shoved his wife into the closet and went to the back door, he watched the tornado pass RIGHT THERE!! if only he had a camera, imagine that footage.
I read reports that this tornado tried to pull up underground shelters. The one guy towards the end reported they needed multiple people to hold the door being held shut. At max intensity it peeled off asphalt and tried to pull up underground shelters.
@@uuuultra I honestly don’t know. Maybe it was the door locking mechanisms that failed and that made it seem like the shelter was being extracted. I can’t post a link here because the post will surely be removed but there is a study out there noting that. I could not find the original article about extraction but I did read that at some point.
I agree with @Lori Richards! Thanks for these and please upload more if you have them. I love older coverage and looking back at massive storms such as these. Hope everyone has a safe rest of the summer!
Cannot believe it just passed 25 years. Wow. I have been wanting to see the full coverage of this ever since I saw a documentary here on TH-cam where the showed the Tornado Emergency announcement clip. Condolences to those who lost their lives, and the families of the victims, as well as all others who were greatly affected by this event from NY State.
I had just moved back to Tinker AFB from California. I said on May 1st how much I missed a good thunderstorm. I was 100 yards to the east as it passed Tinker and the gate that the Airman was killed. We will all remember May 3rd as a watermark in weather history. We who were in the path of the storm have our stories of what happened. Just as much, we remember those who died. May 3rd took too many good people from us.
I doubt he was eating he was trying to see the ground but the wind was very intense and horses can’t see right under their nose. He was trying to figure out how to escape the paddock or where to run. He kept his butt in the wind so he can see better as well as watch where the tornado was going. Poor thing. 😢 Hopefully he stayed were he was because that was the safest spot in his situation.
One of my aunt's friends had her home blown away twice, first on May 3rd 1999, and second on May 20th 2013. I know of many other people who have the same story, and I have a lot of respect for folks who are strong enough to rebuild like that.
the event of a tornado but like having to replace simple things like tooth brush, hair brush, underwear, I won't continue that list by no means bc I think ya got the jist of it....
55:00 I'm telling you I've heard of these but I FELT anxiety watching this entire thing and when it hit here and these guys were out running it... Omgosh! Thought I'd need to take a break! Nerves hit. And this was YEAAAARRRSSS AGO. I can't fathom what these poor folks endured that day living it.
If nowing what happened in1999 and 2013,then if one pkans on maintaining residency in Oklahoma, build a possible sublevel house structure and be prepared to not loose your home and life
That footage of him at the beginning of Twister was from storm coverage of a tornado outbreak in 1973 and is available on YT. It's interesting to see how it was done back then
That tornado that went to Chickasha started forming directly over my house in Apache. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 11 years old and I remember asking my parents if we should go into the cellar. Watching the clouds spiral was absolutely insane. I so wish we could have gotten a video of it.
I had one of those develop above my house in the super early stages tornado dropped in KS but watching a swirl of clouds looking above your house and I could see the sky it was insane.
We can never fully know the number of lives great men like Gary England and James Spann (along with their weather teams) have saved in OK and AL over the decades. May God continue to bless them both for those efforts.
I was living in Moore at that time and was just leaving my daughter with a babysitter. I had listened to Gary England’s voice for years and this time was very different, you could hear and feel the concern in his voice, I couldn’t leave my daughter, I took her home and said to my husband who grew up in Maryland “We need to go, now”. We drove to my brother’s house and got in the shelter with his wife and kids. We sat wide eyed in that cellar as the horrible roaring sound of the tornado went by. One block over got the most damage. I’ll never forget that day and seeing the horrible aftermath of destruction and hearing families life changing stories.
Wow! Thank you for sharing your story! This is a good one I haven’t heard! Glad you are safe! You did the right thing
Stay safe. I got hammered twice in the last six months.
@TennesseeHomesteadUSA
Thank God you're safe. God bless hon ! I said a prayer for yah.
44:44 - “For you children that are home alone, let me talk to you for just a second…”
**chills**
Gary England was truly the best.
I never once say Mike Morgan say anything like that. Gary is incredible.
Oh my god imagine being home alone in that
Best in Oklahoma yes, but James Spann in Alabama is the best meteorologist overall.
I’m from Alabama & yes JS is the Gary England for Alabama! There’ll never be 2 more like em
Except where he said get between the stool and the wall. I had no idea what he meant there. Maybe it's a oklahoma thing, but I don't keep a stool in my bathroom, unless he was referring to stool, as in the stool that's in a toilet. But that was kind of confusing if you wanted to know the truth
Bridge Creeker here. This monster hit half mile south of our home. The homes at the end of our road weren't demolished, they were gone. Our community was never mentioned until after this day. We lost 13 people and hundreds of injuries. Our school was turned into a triage center and morgue. It took years to recover. A day we will never forget.😢
I usually hear bridge creek mention with the Moore tornado, they just didn't put it in the name
@@mattb6646yeah
They said it wasn’t mentioned while it was happening
They mentioned it afterward
As somebody who also lives in a tiny town that nobody has ever heard of, I can relate
They focus more on places that are bigger population areas
@@UnlicensedOkie usually just because more lives are lost or damage is done, thats usually what they name the tornado after if it hits multiple towns
My friends lost their newborn baby this day and the mother in law. The father in law & my 2 friends were almost killed. My momma held Baby Ashton on Sunday at church then just days later he was back where he was sent from. They had more children however now divorced. Her scars are a forever reminder of how lucky they all are. Tornadoes like these don’t happen to often thank God but when they do, they deserve respect.
I moved to Oklahoma in 1999, I fell in love with Gary England during a broadcast when he said " now for you kids that are home alone......." you could tell that he genuinely cared - he wasn't just about ratings he was about safety!
I believe he also said that with El Reno in 2013, but he says it here also 44:45
@@PublicAtLarge Dave Freeman did the same with his coverage of the May 4th, 2007 tornado that devastated Greensburg, Kansas. Dave was the chief meteorologist for KSNW; the NBC station in Wichita, KS at the time of the Greensburg tornado and he urged any kids who might be home alone or with a babysitter that they had to be brave and turn the volume on the TV or the computer speakers or the radio so they could hear him as they took shelter. Dave Freeman, James Spann, Gary England, Mike Morgan and Damon Lane are the five meteorologists for whom I have high levels of respect.
@@michaellovely6601 you can add Dr. Greg Forbes to that list as well
@@jeffvanschoonhoven5171 Oh absolutely. I would also add in Jamie Simpson for his coverage of the Memorial Day tornado that tore through Dayton, Ohio in 2019. Viewers who were watching a new episode of "The Bachelorette" on Fox 45 complained about how the coverage of the tornado had interrupted the show; but Jamie was having none of it and ripped into viewers on air.
Gary retired about 3 months after the 2013 El Reno tornado, but he had been OKC's trusted voice since the early 1970's. He even made a cameo in the movie Twister where they used archived footage of him that Jo's Father was watching just before the F5 arrived. He even had a premonition after Moore was hit by the F4 in 2003. He said an EF5 was going to strike within the OKC Metro Area when schools were letting out kids, calling it the worst-case scenario, and guaranteed it would happen. On May 20th, 2013, what he said 10 years prior transpired in Moore. Unfortunately, 7 children were killed at Plaza Towers (damage was labeled EF4 for the school) where the EF5 tornado was inflicting EF5 damage to a few homes a couple of blocks to the North of both Briarwood and Plaza Towers.
Oh my goodness, they've finally released this footage. We've been waiting for this to be released for more than 20 years.
It's great for people who love to study weather and natural disasters to watch coverage of the May 3, 1999 tornado that tore through Moore, Oklahoma provided by Oklahoma City's CBS affiliate KWTV Channel 9 and hear the familiar comforting voice of the station's chief meteorologist Gary England. Gary guided many residents of Oklahoma through the many violent and destructive tornadoes that tore through the state and always made sure to let kids who were either at home alone or with a babysitter and no doubt scared to death know that if they listen to him they will survive. I have reason to believe that the kids who have listened to Gary England are moms and dads themselves and use his advice to keep their own kids safe.
Channel 4 also released their coverage as well.
Why would they not run this at the time, makes no sense to archive,then revive years later , now a days we share live, IMO that can save lives, I posted hurricanes live , then people see the threat and take very serious
🌤🌧🌧🌧🌧🌩🌩🌩🌪🌪🌪⚡⚡🌪🌀🌬🌪🌩
Ikr? Bout time.
This reminds me of my childhood, my dad always told me if I was home alone and severe weather was happening to go in his room and turn on the radio and move the dial until I hear Gary England. I miss Gary.
I have watched every single video the net has to offer on this tornado...This is the very first time I have seen ch.9's full broadcast of this terrible day. Thank you for adding this!
Did you see that guy in the wheel chair with that long stick stuck in his head. God help him
@@darrylclaxton7473 OMG yes! I think the news anchors say it is a woman not a man though either way it's horrific.
Even dirt is a deadly weapon in a 250mph+ wind its as good as a sand blaster. Debarks trees, hell it even scours out the ground as deep as 2 feet.
The hook echo on this storm was the most well defined signature I’ve ever seen on radar
Right? I had never seen their radar imaging and when I saw that I gasped. Even the more recent monster in 2013 didn’t look that defined
@@nosilee2964I’m just now seeing your comment and you’re absolutely CORRECT! To this day I’ve never seen such a well defined radar signature
Unbelievable the power that thing had it even brought down the wall cloud with it 😩
@@nosilee2964that and then Mayfield in 2021.
27:54 To hear GARY ENGLAND say in 1999 "I don't ever recall anything exactly like this." is chilling. There's almost a sense of helplessness in his voice. He was drawing from nearly 40 years of experience at that time. It is difficult to explain to people who didn't live through it just how jaw dropping this tornado was. It's astonishing the death toll wasn't much higher, and it is a direct result of outstanding coverage the OKC teams provided that day.
Well, thankfully. Oklahomans know to respect their meteorologist when their desperately telling them to take cover and that this is a MAJOR tornado.
When the weather person says you aren’t safe above ground, you aren’t safe above ground.
Had a good friend of mine that was badly injured by it even after getting in a bathtub to ride it out. He lived just west of Tinker AFB south of S.E. 29th St. in an area that later was surveyed to have EF4 damage. Took 3 days to finally locate him in an area hospital because of the mass confusion there. He passed away from long term complications a couple of years ago as a result of the encounter. RIP Earl Talley.
Sorry for your loss 🙏 may your friend Rip 🙏
Sorry for the loss of your friend from England 🏴 to 🇺🇸
I know exactly where that is
How does this not have more views. This is some of the most unique and incredible footage of this event I’ve ever seen. Truly horrifying footage.
“If you’re above ground and in the path of this tornado, you’re going to die”, is what Gary England, the channel 9 weatherman said. I grabbed my mom and wife and went into a shelter. Many homes, one block to the East and West my house were completely swept off their foundations.
Val & Amy Castor are legendary chasers. The whole crew at KWTV are amazing. Again thank KWTV for the hard work you all do and thank you Chief Meteorologist David Payne for all you do.
I worked for a TV station in Austin, TX in may 1999. Our chief meteorologist and one of our producers ended up in Moore that day covering the outbreak, ended up saving the life of someone whom was critically injured.
A person cannot begin to imagine what it’s like to live through something like this. I was in a F-4 tornado when I was seven years old. It traumatizes you. You never ever forget.
I'd be really interested in which tornado u were in and anything you'd be comfortable sharing I've been interested in tornadoes since I was in third grade when the Andover hit F5 and everyone caught it on video and saw one unexpectedly in Florida 96 and it was on the other side of the highway while I was going on a vacation with my family and although I always wanted to see one but
I was hoping to expect it like chasers..... when I first saw it it freaked me out I looked away almost like it didn't exist if I didn't look at it
Then my dad reminded me how I've always wanted to see one so I opened my eyes again and watch the final stages of it rope out which all together was on the ground for less than 5 minutes but wasn't expecting it and that's a big difference than chasing them and just seeing one while driving through a storm in a state you're not from forgetting which direction you're in correlation to it but back then my father was I guess I always felt safe when he was driving no matter what was happening but I know a lot of people know what I mean
But seriously any story I could hear that hasn't been told publicly a million times I'd love to hear and I don't mean to publish I'm just personally curious if you feel like telling the story on here or something
I was freaked out by the 3 mile miss by a tornado that was ef2 closest to me. I got no warning and it was 4 in the morning. It destroyed multiple steel buildings at ef3 strength and sent a good bit of people to the hospital. So it makes sense to be worried. But that little tiny baby is nothing. If you had them next to each other you wouldn’t even notice it. Something like this is too much for my brain to handle. It’s so big and so powerful you can’t do anything to save yourself other than get underground.
So true. When I was 5 years old my family and I lived through a direct hit by a strong F3 tornado. It remains the scariest night of my life. The trauma of that experience worsened as I got older until my parents sought out professional help for me, which helped immensely. Living through one of these monsters haunts you in ways you don't expect. I can't imagine what it would be like to live through an EF4 or worse, an EF5. In addition those who live in this area of Oklahoma have experienced this several times now. I admire their resilience and courage, I would live in a perpetual state of fear.
@@Carolinagirl1028 I’m glad you were able to get some help. Unfortunately I wasn’t. And like you said it’s something that stays with you forever. Ever since I went through that tornado I am deathly afraid of storms because you just never know.
@@blaine8274 I'll take that as a sign you don't want to tell your story then because if you posted it here I would certainly read it but maybe it's none of my business I can tell you my experiences but none of them were tragic
17:02 one of the few shots of the Moore Oklahoma 1999 tornado at maximum size and wind speed of 318mph just shredding everything
Never seen anything like it.😮
2:35:00 the woman who cried about the neighbors not letting her in the storm shelter SHAME ON THEM FOR BEING SELFISH.
Shame On them.
Cannot imagine what that woman went through. I live in the northeastern US, in NY State, and even I cannot imagine what that woman probably had to go through. That’s selfish of those neighbors.
There's a chance that the people in the shelter were physically unable to open the shelter. I remember hearing a story about the 2013 tornado where a woman came out of her shelter crying because someone was banging on her shelter, but she wasn't physically strong enough to open the door against the force of the storm
I couldn't open my own door with f2 winds. No way shes opening a shelter door with Those winds.
@thegreyghost5846 thank you. I tried opening my door to go downstairs, and i couldn't. That was an f2 wind intensity. I was absolutely terrified. If i seen THIS, bye
Thanks for uploading these! Please add more in the future for us weather enthusiasts.
I know. There other videos get like 19 views. Haha
Today *May 3rd, 2023* marks 24 years since the Oklahoma tornado, Prayers go out to people who are still coping with the loss of loved ones and all the people who helped after the storm. Remember NEVER go under an overpass to try and avoid a tornado, Winds actually accelerate under there, The best thing to do in get to a tornado shelter underground chances of surviving the tornado are higher underground
Thats why I pulled this up. Well said!
No kidding
We didn’t lose anyone but our 2 dogs were in this thing and amazingly both survived. One of them was found by a man we had known for years and another was picked up by a lady and taken to a shelter. Still very grateful to both of them for essentialy saving our dogs and giving them 7 more years with us.
Yesterday was the 25th. I came from the Emplemon video about the tornado
This very tornado almost 25 years later still holds the record for highest wind speeds ever recorded on earth. It peaked in Bridge Creek at 318 mph. Gary England was the chief meteorologist at News 9 in OKC for 40 years. He’s considered by many to be the best meteorologist ever. I was born and raised in Newcastle. One of the towns that got hit by this tornado. This is the only time I ever recalled him being flustered during a storm. Whenever someone like him says “You need to be below ground. You will not survive this if you’re not below ground.”, it makes you realize how much of a monster this tornado was. May 3rd still is and will probably always be the baddest tornado in US history.
I've watched this many times, and here I am again on the anniversary of this horrible storm.
Rest in Peace to those who lost their lives on that awful day.
There are a lot of us who will never forget.
It would be 24 years right?
This saved lives , the historic event with Gary and his TEAM gave a fleeing population eyes above as it happened , providing the listener some degree of working intel like a military exercise . As I listened to this event live You could feel the concern on every reporting chasers voice , brought chills to the meer hearing its description . It being cloaked in clouds must have seemed enormously unreal in size and scope.This news reporting team needs to be commended for its value to its community , an award giving ceremony to show hard hitting reporting , period .
They are. They are regarded as some of if not the best outside abc in Alabama for severe coverage and tornado coverage. Although, Gary has now retired this footage and coverage is historic for this kind of an event.
did this one kill anyone? i hope not. this must've been so scary for even the news people
@@ASLLover666 36 direct deaths, +5 indirect deaths. This tornado sadly had a very high casualty count. This thing has an eerie resemblance to the Phil-Campbell EF5 of 2011, it's even heavily rain wrapped with a very low-hanging wall cloud like that monster was.
@@dannyllerenatv8635 oh damn. poor people
@@ASLLover666 This one was very long-tracked at 38 miles and was on the ground for almost 1 hour and 30 minutes. Not only did it destroy parts of Moore, but it also nearly wiped out amber and bridge-creek. This is one of the worst tornadoes recorded in modern history.
I turned 33 the next month. 4th generation Oklahoman who had watched Gary England from childhood. Was between Ada and Shawnee watching this. When Gary said "You NEED to be below ground!" my blood ran cold.
@Pat Luxor Pat, “Luxor” get ahold of yourself! Your psychosis is showing. That’s what following a white rabbit will do to you. Enter rabbit holes at the risk of your own sanity. Read your Bible and trust God only.
I was 6 when this happened. We lived in Tuttle, and I will never forget how hard the house was shaking while we hid under the stairs.
NEVER hide under the stairs. Those things can collapse easily
@@Nwsthe2ndweatheeforecaster It was 1999, back when the overpass myth was still a thing.
@@Nwsthe2ndweatheeforecaster She is still here to type what she did, so it worked. Not trying to be a smart a$$, just saying sometimes you do the best you can with what you have.
@@dcrggreensheep Intresting, thanks for telling me that
I was 13 years old when this happened .I didn't live in Oklahoma but I was a big weather buff as a kid and I remember this event live from watching the weather channel.
My grandparents in Russia had only ever come to visit us in OK once; it just happened to be in May of 1999. They haven’t been back.
Ohhhh no. I was crying at the lady who's neighbor wouldn't let them in then seen this comment and cackled. 😂 I am so sure it wasn't meant to be funny at all but thank you for sharing. I hope they visit at some point. ❤
Yeah they get tornadoes in Europe and even Russia but absolutely nothing like the tornado that was in Moore in 1999 😂
😂 needed this comment after reading all the sad experiences.
It's incredible to me how many people got hit by this tornado in Moore. Look at the advanced warning everyone had. Always be weather aware, the weather can literally change your life forever.
Loving these weather vault videos I hope you keep adding more!
25 years ago today, my aunt and uncle moved into their new home in Moore, Oklahoma. And within a few hours, they watched this tornado roar by a few blocks away (they were never hit, but it was close). Rip to the ones who lost their lives.
I was in Bridge Creek at this time. We were picking up one of my older cousins because he was going to come visit. I remember seeing the clouds rotating. We left literally minutes before the tornado hit Bridge Creek. Suffice to say, it was pretty terrifying watching rotating clouds out the rear window of a tiny pickup.
Oh my! At least you guys had the firm but comforting voice of Gary England. I'm from Ohio and I have a lot of respect for Gary because he has been a guiding light for many people in Oklahoma during many violent and destructive tornadoes. If there's anything I wish; I wish that Gary England and James Spann were covering the EF5 tornado that tore through Joplin, Missouri on May 22, 2011. If James and Gary were covering the Joplin tornado there is no doubt in my mind that they would have been able to save many lives.
@@michaellovely6601 TH-cam search first person video Joplin tornado. It is video from people who took shelter in a gas station store freezer and is some of the most terrifying tornado videos you will see/hear. There is an aftermath one too where they show the destroyed building. The freezer was the only thing that “partially” made it. Everyone in the freezer survived.
@@fitfogey I remember seeing this video in an episode of a show on The Weather Channel called "Real Time Tornado" which profiled the Joplin, Missouri tornado. It was shot inside the FasTrip gas station by a guy named Isaac Duncan.
@@michaellovely6601 Never knew that. Thanks for your input here. Crazy stuff for sure!
@@fitfogey That it was. I have not only seen the episode of "Real Time Tornado" which profiled the Joplin, Missouri EF5 tornado; but I have also seen the episodes which profiled the tornadoes that struck Tuscaloosa Alabama, Henryville Indiana, Hattiesburg Mississippi, Moore Oklahoma, and Washington, Illinois. A truly inspiring story from the Henryville, IN tornado on March 2nd, 2012 is that of a school bus driver named Angel Perry. Angel was just a few miles away from the Henryville school complex when she spotted the tornado and immediately fell back on her training to ensure the safety of the children in her care. Angel knew that the safest place for her and her students was the Henryville school complex; so she turned around and hurried back to the school. After counting off the students as they ran for their lives into the office area of Henryville Elementary School; Angel hurried into the building herself. Her bus was the one that got hurled into a diner across the street from the school. In the episode on the Moore, Oklahoma tornado on May 20th, 2013; a truly inspiring story is that of a man named Sam Peña. Sam displayed nearly superhuman abilities to keep his son Benji along with several of Benji's friends and classmates safe by using all of his physical strength to hold up a cinder block wall as they took shelter from the storm in a boys bathroom of Briarwood Elementary School. Watching the episode on the Washington, Illinois tornado left me feeling shocked because of the day the tornado occurred: November 17th, 2013. You really don't expect a tornado to strike in late November; and as a result the residents of Washington had gone from being excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas to a sense of heartbreak and helplessness. To add to their misery it snowed a week after the tornado; which as you can imagine hindered cleanup efforts. What is so surprising about the EF4 tornado which struck Hattiesburg, Mississippi on February 10th, 2013 is that no fatalities occurred and only eighty-two people were injured. This tornado badly damaged or destroyed many businesses and vehicles on Hardy Street and Oak Grove Road in downtown Hattiesburg along with numerous homes and damaging residence halls on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. Not many students or faculty members of USM were on campus because they had gone down to New Orleans, Louisiana for Mardi Gras weekend as Hattiesburg isn't too far from New Orleans.
First time seeing KWTV's full coverage from this event. The KFOR coverage has been available for a long time and I've watched it multiple times. My takeaway from the differences, KFOR went wall to wall with metro area damage reporting after the Moore/MWC tornado dissipated largely ignoring the rest of the ongoing weather events, while KWTV stayed with severe weather coverage on all the rest of the multuple tornadic storms throughout the viewing area before turning to damage reporting. This decision by KWTV likely saved multiple lives across Oklahoma outside of the OKC metro that day.
I didn't know channel nine had so much live coverage of the tornado. I was really surprised that kept cutting away from it as well.
I grew up in NW Oklahoma we usually only watch KWTV out there because they are the ones that will keep us covered. As an adult we actually have a KWTV storm chaser that lives out near Woodward and keeps them covered and updates his Facebook page with it. He also keeps our wildfires covered. Everyone in the NW knows Marty Logan.
@@tawnyprovince-ward2353 Bless Marty Logan
Gary England was a honorable man, a genuine good human, he cared more about his impact on safety then money ..money never changed him. He never had allegations against him. He was amazing 👏 he's a part of Oklahoma history!
This was my third birthday here in Lawton. I remember being at the lake with my family, then being at my grandma's eating cake, then waking up later that evening in my mom's closet. I started crying and calling for mom and somewhere out of the dark my brother told me the power was out. I remember we didn't have power for awhile and all the power lines were laid out on the roads.
I survived this monster. I still live in Moore, even after all of this. Gary England told everyone to get underground or you wouldn't survive this. I'm grateful for my neighbor, at the time, for rounding up everyone on the block and getting us to safety in her storm cellar. As soon as those doors closed, the sirens went off.
It's nice to hear him speak to children who are home alone at 44:42
Gary was great at live reporting. Miss hearing him. Thanks for posting News9.
What made this outbreak so dangerous was the setup. I'm going to explain a few things on the set up
The jet stream was very powerful set directly over Oklahoma, powerful low pressure storm to the northwest centered close to Colorado.
Dew points were well into the 70s and 80s, CAPE(Convective Available Potential Energy) values were off the charts at 6000J/kg (Joules per kilogram)
Dry line set far western Oklahoma. For those that don't know what a Dry line is. A Dry line is the area that separates warm moist humid air from the dry cooler air aka the battle zone for the storms.
These storms stayed isolated super cells instead of becoming a QLCS(Quasi Linear Convective System) aka Squall line. In a squall line scenario, each imbedded supercell is fighting for that energy to thrive which makes the tornado potential go down significantly but they can still happen.
I can keep going on with the explanation but that's the basics of why and how.
Thank you for the explanation! I didn't know the difference between isolated cells and the QLCS you described. I live in Minnesota, and I mostly see the type of thunderstorms that form a squall line.
i don't get it
It all came together after 200 pm. In the early morning hours the set up wasn't very apparent. What really sealed the deal was some breaks in the clouds and an approaching jet streak that wasn't known until it was samples by Doppler profiler (upward facing radars) networks. And that didn't occur until around 1 in the afternoon. I'm not even sure computer modeling in this day and age would have done much better with that rather anomalous set up.
Thank you
2:58:53 is heartbreaking. Their loved did what she could, getting in the bathtub, but it wasn’t enough. What a horrible thing to find.
That was awful - she’d just had her baby a month prior - terribly sad
You know everyone always talks about the sound tornadoes make, the ol' freight train cliche, but you know what hardly anyone ever talks about? The smell. The smell. All that churned up dirt and broken tree limbs and pine two by fours and insulation and ozone and mud and people's lives and homes and ground up together....if you have never smelled it you couldn't possibly imagine what it's like and if you have lived through it you can never forget it
never thought about this. thank you for this perspective!
Walking outside into the darkness, like darker than ever and seeing ambient light showing me snapped power lines what comes to my mind. Then comes firefighters with flashlights from a distance while you watch h their lights get closer. I was also next to the tornado west of El Reno during this broadcast. Went to check on my parents and nobody was there. I had a 79 Camaro doing 100 behind a cop with his lights blaring I was one of few on the road getting back to my apartment that was very close to this.
Your description is hauntingly accurate .. and whew .. bring s total recall. Thank you. My goodness. Shaking my head.
What was always eerie to me is how silent everything gets after it's all over. That's what I remember when my dad's house was hit in the 2013 Moore tornado. The silence afterwards
You could have said that in 6-8 words
No other state, city or country’s live weather broadcast can ever compare to Oklahoma City in terms of tech, experience and overall seriousness.
Gary England, Mike Morgan, David Payne, Reed timmer, Val castor, and everyone else THANK YOU!!!!! Home town heroes
I think they won an Emmy award for this coverage
Well said
41:18 the mega balls the cameraman has just standing there recording it 💪
This is scary asf even watching it nearly 25 years later...
Yes, but then they cut away from it.. I was Screaming, why are you cutting away from that incredible shot
Gary seems like the kind of cool, calm character you want at the helm during this kind of outbreak where lives are at stake.
He was pretty cool back then. But... lol. Do yourself a favor and don't look up what he's been up to lately. I'll spare your feelings and not spell it out here. Maybe old age is just a curse.
@@Asterra2 huh? I don’t see that he’s been up to anything controversial.
The only thing remotely controversial I can find that he’s ever done was back in like 2007, saying that climate change was natural (as opposed to man-made), but remember that at the time many people did not believe that climate change was occurring at all… so by comparison, Gary’s position is quite reasonable.
@@TheLocalLt He spends his time on Twitter mirroring tweets with anti-vax, anti-mask, and yes, climate denial messages. I just shrug when one senile old man howls at the moon that he knows better than the scientific body about the climate (even if, fundamentally, he is just aping the horseshit his conservative bubble is feeding him), but when a person with a lot of followers says dangerous things about public health, he causes deaths. That's pretty damn inexcusable.
Unlike David Payne, who will make you need to change your pants.
David payne couldn't carry Gary's jock strap, weather predictions have fallen off since the old guys have retired and the just regurgitate computer models
I've waited YEARS for this coverage to be released!
I was in the 8th grade when this storm hit. I was in south norman and I could hear a rumble like I've never heard. My uncle was extremely lucky living in Moore. He was just out of the damage. If you stood on his porch and looked right there was minor damage. Looked left and 7 house down were completely gone.
25:30 power flashes. 34:40 Fort Cobb live tornado shot, black as night. 35:25 tornado warning Okarche.
35:50 live shot Okarche tornado. 36:30 & 37:00 damage path Ranger 9 helicopter. 38:35 Close-up video Newcastle
area. 40:50 long video. 42:14 power flashes and sirens going off in Moore. Times approximate. Lead-in
time on all numbers. I am just doing this for my reference. This is a very informing video channel 9 has put together. 48:10 Val Castor video following tornado on 149th street. I do not hear anything about the
debris ball. Maybe we did not have that capability in 1999. But in the hook area I can see a RED ball in the
hook on the radar. 55:30 damage path. 1:50:54 incredible sight, residents walking in a line to go
somewhere to stay. This was an ugly ugly storm. Awful.
And it doesn’t help that about 14 years later pretty much the same storm happened again
One of the most violent and concentrated weather events on the planet. Majestic and horrible all at the same time. Those poor people in its path had their whole lives upheaved by this monster, some literally.
It was like a tornado assembly line that day. Just one after the other.
I moved to South OKC about 3 1/2 years ago in an area that was leveled by this tornado. It’s crazy to think that less than 25 years ago, this place was wiped out and then got smacked again roughly 10 years ago. How this area just builds back better is just astonishing.
Same here. I live in Moore off 19th street. My house was in the 2013 path, and barely missed this one in 99.
I really don't understand why people rebuild in the same spot or why anyone would move into an area 2 massive tornadoes have leveled in the past. Seems like a pretty bad idea.
@@Douglas_I There’s an obvious reason to be hesitant and aware of that. But I wouldn’t let fear of natural disasters be what dictates where I’m gonna live.
If we all lived like that, coastal cities would be empty. California would be empty. Earthquakes, hurricanes, & tornadoes can’t be your reason for where you choose to live and plant your roots.
This is more gripping and terrifying than any Hollywood rendition of storms and tornadoes. I got chills at 35:25 when there was so much information incoming and he's trying to triage and parse out the most important information for the viewers to get them to safety. Amazing work because I would have been an absolute mess. I saw one once from afar while going to school in southeast Missouri and now I am safely tucked in southern California. I will take wild fires, earthquakes and mentally ill homeless over one of those tornadic beasts any day!
02:35:25 How can anyone be so cruel, hateful , apathetic, uncompassionate and heartless to deny shelter to neighbors in the time of such a severe and dangerous storm????
That's awful 😢
She probably couldn't open the cellar door. Just my two cents. I had an f2 50 feet from me. I tried going downstairs for help. I live in an upstairs apartment. Yikes. That door would not open. I heard my window break too. This tornado would have killed me immediately. The wind suction was so incredible i couldn't open my door, and if i did, id have been in bad shape. It. It feels like a suction cup
21:00 you can literally see the updraft twisting damn that tornado was very powerfu
This took my parents' house in Moore. The only thing left was the closet that they were hiding in.
That hook echo is the most symmetrical and perfect signature I've ever seen
Wow that one guy they had in a wheel chair had a long stick stuck in his head. God help him
Finally, after nearly 24 years we have the full picture. This day defined my path in life. I grew up in Midwest City, and experiencing that power up close created a passion for weather unmatched by anything else. What an event. Gary was my hero growing up. Thanks for posting this, y'all.
I've been waiting 24 years for this... The twist is that I'm 20
As a metrology enthusiast I'm fascinated by this storm, yet feel bad for the families and everyone involved... The damage looks like a place that was bombed or bulldozed!
This storm was basically 2x stronger than a category 5 hurricane!
Radar indicated 316mph winds, from dopplar on wheels
A moment in history that as an Oklahoman can not be forgotten
Gary England and James Spann are fantastic meteorologists..
I remember being stuck on the road while this was happening as a kid while My dad my brother and I were driving from Abilene to Kansas that evening.... I don't know how fast a 1991 Pontiac Grand Am was Supposed to go but I'm pretty sure we found out while we heard about this developing on the radio, the sky began to get dark and he scrambled to get us all into shelter, I remember him screaming into a brick gas station about the time it was raining too hard to see anything more than general shapes with the wipers on full speed and trees were already starting to buckle. We lost power about 45 seconds after the manager helped us into the safest part of the building.
Wild memory for sure.
I miss Gary England! He's such a pro. I remember that day. It was horrifying to watch as it happened. Glad I was 60 miles away at the time.
This was terrifying. I lived in a complex off shields in Moore. It luckily didnt destroy too much. But it was terrifying for me and my toddler. I was in another one there in 2013, i think.
There’s just something about watching older raw weather footage. I was 11, moving back to my hometown of noble from Vegas. I’ll never forget the sky that day. Moore was literally unrecognizable. This is why Mr. England is the Jordan of weather.
As a non-US:
I've been watching videos, reviews, coverages, documentaries, storm chaser dashcam footages, reading Wikipedia's and comments about tornadoes, mostly about EF5s, for days now. Every EF5 has created its own terrifying, but also fascinating biblical myth around itself.
First and foremost, I've been mostly drenched down about all the lives that were lost in all of them. Every time I've heard and read about whole families and children being killed somewhere down there I felt nothing but gut-wrenched and truly saddened.
Imagining the sheer horror and terror of wind speeds well above 200, 250, even 300mph, ripping down houses around them while approaching the very own location steadily, must be one of the worst experiences of Mother Nature you can ever endure.
And if this being horrific wasn't enough, it unravels being heartbreakingly tragic in the aftermath.
I couldn't stop reading and watching so much about every single one of them. I felt terrified by all of them.
This one right here, the May 3rd F5, had reached F5 intensity three times over its lifespan. I can't think of a more torturing tornado, maybe growing hopes by noise that it's may be decreasing and finally dissipating. Only to grow back, almost as if in rage, to EF5 intensity over and over again.
Another terrifying aspect:
Especially the Moore/El Reno/Oklahoma City area seems to be the Bermuda Triangle on Earth's surface. It's almost devilish that four of the most violent EF5's ever recorded happened here.
Rest in Peace to everyone who had lost their life and loved ones in any tornado. I especially want to say all my prayers to all the children that had lost their lives.
Thank you to all the weather reporters. You have contributed to saving lives!
An Oklahoma tornado located in Woodward in 1947 that killed over 100 people was the tornado that prompted the beginning of the storm warning system to provide for time to get to safety. If that event hadn’t have happened I cannot imagine how many deaths OKC would’ve had. With as terrible as this tornado was the death toll was low.
I can't myself! Everytime I don't have anything to do, I pull this video up and watch the entire thing over again. This is a storm of a lifetime. You have a mesocyclone (the rotating part of the storm) that is every bit of 5 miles in diameter and shoots 6 miles straight into the sky like a huge cylinder of cloud. No one has ever seen this! Before or since! The storm is so wrapped up in the high, mid and low levels it doesnt lose its shape and form through its entire life and travel of well over 100 miles! Just boom! Staight up into the sky! Under the storm, in the low level sheer, the tornado itself goes from multi vortex,to near 2 mile wide wedge, to twins, to stove pipe and...has anyone EVER seen a wall cloud dip so low? I'll bet at times it isnt 800 feet off the ground. Yeah, this is a once in a lifetime deal...At least you hope it is. Loss of life is so low in this event compared to F5 tornados in other states because ya'll understand tornados in Oklahoma. Your spotters and meteorologists knew enough to ditch the "first floor center of the house" advise and went straight to "underground or LEAVE". I do have to admit, I'm still a little pissed at the criticisim Mike Morgan faced when he gave the same advice in 2013 for the Moore EF5 and ElReno monster...some thrill seeking stormchasing bone head I will call"Skippy Tallobit " actually stated he cause a panic traffic jam...Which is funny because it was actually storm chasers that caused an El Reno man to lose his life by cramming up his exit route. I digress...I'm still furious about that.
25 years ago today. My God how time flies.
28:26 that lone circle to the West of Newcastle is what we call today a TDS (Tornado Debris Signature) or simply a debris ball. If we had today's updated radar, I can't imagine how pink/lavender it would have been.
I lived in Westmoore Edition off Santa Fe across from Plaza Towers. I remember this day. I was in 9th grade at the time. When I watched it from the backyard I couldn't make out what it was. I just saw this giant grey mass of cloud slowly moving towards us.
I remember we were out of school for about a week or two. I recall they canceled all our finals and we pretty much all got to graduate with ease.
Me and some friends walked from school back to our neighborhood. We saw cars all over the place, what looked like ducks that were splattered against a brick wall, pieces of straw stuck into telephone poles, and buildings flattened all over.
We didn't get hit by this one but the 2013 tornado hit us. The house collapsed a few days afterwards.
Myself as well as my granddaughter love storms and weather as well . Love what y'all do.
That shot at 39:42 is incredible.
I've seen that in a lot of documentaries on this outbreak. I've always been fascinated by tornadoes since the movie Twister came out... but this tornado, and the others that cropped up looked vicious
Incredible indeed. Gotta be on top of your chasing game AND have balls of steel to be filming that.
I remember the flurry of documentaries and the global coverage this got. It was front and center on the BBC's news for the third and fourth, and they sent a camera crew to spend a week in OKC I think it was, there's footage on TH-cam of one of the journalists sitting down with Gary in the weather center which is far more entertaining than it should be.
So thanks News 9, and I've been keeping a count of how many documentaries featured this coverage. I'm up to at least 20-25 just off the top of my head. Comparing this to even the 2003 coverage, or earlier coverage on YT, it's amazing how far the technology has come along year on year.
Also that choppper pilot has amazing flying skills. Anyone that can keep a copter in the air in that sort of environment is absolutely amazing with any sort of aircraft.
That's Jim Gardner. Gary England has retired, but Jim is still flying that chopper helping his fellow citizens. I can't imagine who could carry the mantle once he steps down. All the storm coverage I've seen with him flying around tracking everything for so long & just how well he does it. It is certainly a tall order for anyone to follow in his flight path.
@@NoNames-vw3bq Leroy Tatom was News 9 for this day reportedly. Gardner flew for local competitor KFOR (Channel 4) until KWTV replaced their other pilot (not Tatom, but Mason Dunn) for... dubious reasons.
Reed timmer's career started on this day
I was just thinking about this comment
Ironic he missed the second OKC tornado by leaving the city chasing a non existing tornado. I think he always regrets that one
I’m not a big fan Reed.
@@GR-bn3xjthat was the 2013 one
I am 26 years old. I was 3 years old when this happened. I was in MWC with my mother in a shelter and it just barely missed us. I clearly don’t remember a thing, but I have done so much research. I have compared this storm to the may 20th 2013 tornado, and I’ve seen all the internet has to offer. There is a lot of information that I just didn’t have until I watched this.
I am EXTREMELY impressed with Gary England and I still haven’t seen anyone who measures up to this man. Everything about the way he handled this just screams professionalism, like he was made for it.
I grew up watching Gary England and nobody compares. He was always the best and my favorite meteorologist to go to when weather got bad.
The footage at 38:39 is absolutely insane
It really is probably the most incredible footage ever.
Holy crap I've watched this video before but I don't remember seeing that crazy footage! The person filming that must have nerves of steel! The violence we're seeing there is just unbelievable!
OMG, poor Newcastle and Moore! And from what I've read, not many homes there were built with basements.
And that's something that shouldn't be acceptable given the area's history. I can't imagine anything above ground-even a safe room being able to stand up to a tornado like this EF-5 monster!
@@jonathanbecker8935 you can’t affordably build basements in Texas and Oklahoma because the soil is shallow and bedrock is right underneath. Storm shelters are about the best you can do without using TNT
Sheesh
Was definitely a most terrifying day of my life
Has it really been 25 years already? God damn.
Thanks for uploading these.
Man that sky and the clouds during the opening sequence of this video are green. And I don't think it's a reflection from the feild
THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! Didn’t think I’d ever get to see this coverage! I was 13 at the time of this storm, I don’t remember hearing much about it at the time because I grew up in Boston, but because of the Movie Twister I was already HOOKED on tornadoes. They continue to fascinate me to this day. Especially being an Atheist, so I look at it more in terms of a scientific POV and not a religious one. I was deployed to a combat AOR with a guy from Oklahoma (right outside bridge creek to be exact I believe) and he told me it was far more terrifying than any deployment he had ever taken!! Gary England is A LEGEND, not just to Oklahomans but to anyone who love’s/studies tornadoes!! He along with James Spann in Alabama are my two personal favorites for both their knowledge as well as their personalities on air!! Again THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! Being a fully disabled combat veteran and being stuck at home the overwhelming majority of the time due to both financial and physical reasons this is an AMAZING AND UNEXPECTED GIFT!!
Check out the Jarrell documentary. And look into the Phil Campbell tornado too if you haven't seen them. Tristate tornado. Woodward, Oklahoma got hit with an F5 in 1947 that killed 107 people - this was the 3rd tornado from the single storm cell that tracked from Texas, through Oklahoma & into Kansas before finally weakening enough about midway through Kansas to cease dropping tornadoes.
Thank you for your service. That said, how in any way is your being an atheist relevant to this? Are you under the impression Christian tornado chasers use their own scientific measurements, like from the Bible or something?
@@TheLocalLt No I mention it because you ALWAYS hear “christians” talking about their “god’s plan” and whenever a tornado strikes somewhere and kills people you’ll still hear people saying “god saved them” and the tornado missed a certain house or building and they thank god, meanwhile a block up the road an infant just died after being sucked out of their mother’s arms….so I am simply pointing out that I realize those things happen due to atmospheric conditions and different factors, and NOT because one person “prayed harder” or because they prayed to the “right god”.
@@TheLocalLt They never waste an opportunity to attempt to project their “superiority”; never knowing that the foundation of science is rooted within religion. Roger Bacon and Pope Clement IV come to mind.
@@BlatsteinHAHAHAHA the foundation of science is “rooted in religion” well goddamn, now I think I have actually HEARD IT ALL!!
I’m from SC and spent most of my adult life in VA. I never experienced a tornado before. I feel sorry for yall that were kids during this time and went through this. I know the trauma still lingers, I pray you all recover over the years. I’m 35 now and I remember seeing this on the news.
my mom was around 20 years old and getting her hair done while this storm occurred. she was watching it on the tv the whole time, her grandparents lived in the direct path of this tornado. when she got her hair done, she ran home. of course the power lines were down so she couldnt get ahold of her grandparents, but she watched news 9’s coverage the whole night, until dawn. she tells me she saw emergency services hauling a woman into the hospital with a 2x4 lodged into her forehead, on live tv. i cant imagine.
about her grandparents, thank god, they lived and their house was missed by the tornado by a literal hair. two houses down from theirs, the tornado passed and wiped the rest of their neighborhood. mom tells me her granddad shoved his wife into the closet and went to the back door, he watched the tornado pass RIGHT THERE!! if only he had a camera, imagine that footage.
Dude in the cellar said he now respects tornados, wise man
I read reports that this tornado tried to pull up underground shelters. The one guy towards the end reported they needed multiple people to hold the door being held shut. At max intensity it peeled off asphalt and tried to pull up underground shelters.
Oh, Wow!!! 😳 So scary 😱!!!
source?
@@uuuultra I honestly don’t know. Maybe it was the door locking mechanisms that failed and that made it seem like the shelter was being extracted. I can’t post a link here because the post will surely be removed but there is a study out there noting that. I could not find the original article about extraction but I did read that at some point.
Honestly as serious as this beast was it wouldn't surprise me
Holy smokes. Been wondering if this would ever get released.
I agree with @Lori Richards! Thanks for these and please upload more if you have them. I love older coverage and looking back at massive storms such as these. Hope everyone has a safe rest of the summer!
Thank you Horse Helmet!
@@Dahn.Baern. Hope you have a good New Year Dahn.
Cannot believe it just passed 25 years. Wow. I have been wanting to see the full coverage of this ever since I saw a documentary here on TH-cam where the showed the Tornado Emergency announcement clip.
Condolences to those who lost their lives, and the families of the victims, as well as all others who were greatly affected by this event from NY State.
I had just moved back to Tinker AFB from California. I said on May 1st how much I missed a good thunderstorm. I was 100 yards to the east as it passed Tinker and the gate that the Airman was killed. We will all remember May 3rd as a watermark in weather history. We who were in the path of the storm have our stories of what happened. Just as much, we remember those who died. May 3rd took too many good people from us.
48:58 lmao the horse just continuing to eat
I doubt he was eating he was trying to see the ground but the wind was very intense and horses can’t see right under their nose. He was trying to figure out how to escape the paddock or where to run. He kept his butt in the wind so he can see better as well as watch where the tornado was going. Poor thing. 😢 Hopefully he stayed were he was because that was the safest spot in his situation.
That wall cloud is so beautifully defined, like a Roman colosseum, the atmosphere is electric, even 20 years later
❤❤❤ I've been looking for this for years! Thank you!
It had to be a helpless feeling reporting this. All you can do is give the people information and hope they listen
I live in Moore, Oklahoma & I'll never forget May 3rd... scary day in my area... so sad...
One of my aunt's friends had her home blown away twice, first on May 3rd 1999, and second on May 20th 2013. I know of many other people who have the same story, and I have a lot of respect for folks who are strong enough to rebuild like that.
the event of a tornado but like having to replace simple things like tooth brush, hair brush, underwear, I won't continue that list by no means bc I think ya got the jist of it....
@@tonyacutrell626 gist
55:00 I'm telling you I've heard of these but I FELT anxiety watching this entire thing and when it hit here and these guys were out running it... Omgosh! Thought I'd need to take a break! Nerves hit. And this was YEAAAARRRSSS AGO. I can't fathom what these poor folks endured that day living it.
I'd like to know more about why the neighbor wouldn't let the couple at 2:35:25 go to their storm shelter.
This. I've seen almost every bit of available footage and news broadcasts from this event and never saw this piece until now. It angers me so much.
If nowing what happened in1999 and 2013,then if one pkans on maintaining residency in Oklahoma, build a possible sublevel house structure and be prepared to not loose your home and life
55:03. Gary saving stormchaser’s life.
This is the same dude that did the opening tornado warning in Twister
Really ? Not from OK So I wouldn’t have known anyway. But that’s some dope info to know.
That footage of him at the beginning of Twister was from storm coverage of a tornado outbreak in 1973 and is available on YT. It's interesting to see how it was done back then
That tornado that went to Chickasha started forming directly over my house in Apache. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 11 years old and I remember asking my parents if we should go into the cellar. Watching the clouds spiral was absolutely insane. I so wish we could have gotten a video of it.
I had one of those develop above my house in the super early stages tornado dropped in KS but watching a swirl of clouds looking above your house and I could see the sky it was insane.
We were at I-35 Motel 6 in Moore, we actually slept through it. Woke up with cops knocking on the door saying we have to evacuate.
We can never fully know the number of lives great men like Gary England and James Spann (along with their weather teams) have saved in OK and AL over the decades.
May God continue to bless them both for those efforts.
I was 12 at this time. Lived in Dale, OK. One of those days that sticks with you.