Rex / Jenny I see you are upping my 1/2 mile wide tornado announced yesterday with a 2 mile wide one!
More details on what appears to be a shocking weather event here, including what has happened when the tornado hit an Oklahoma city school:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/8697085/Monster-tornado-slams-into-Oklahoma-city>>>>From stuff.co.nz
A large swathe of suburban Oklahoma City has been pulverised by a tornado that stretched over 3.2km and killed at least 10 people.
The monster twister flattened entire neighbourhoods, set buildings on fire and landed a direct blow on a school.
The storm, with winds of up to 320 kilometres per hour, struck the suburb of Moore, where images from a KFOR-TV helicopter showed the Plaza Towers Elementary School in a pile of rubble.
At least 75 students were in the school at the time, KFOR reported. They were told to "hug the walls", a witness said.
As many as 30 may have been rescued, the station said, and cries for help could be heard from the debris.
''There are 13 kids that are buried right now,'' Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said in an interview in Washington.
''There are 13 kids that are in a school that collapsed, we don't know whether they are alive or dead."
An Associated Press photographer saw several being pulled out of what was left of the building.
Rescue workers lifted children from the rubble before they were passed down a human chain and taken to a triage centre set up in the school's parking lot.
In video of the storm, the dark funnel cloud could be seen marching slowly across the green landscape.
As it churned through the community, the twister scattered shards of wood, pieces of insulation, awnings, shingles and glass all over the streets.
At Plaza Towers, the storm tore off the roof, knocked down walls and turned the playground into a mass of twisted plastic and metal.
James Rushing, who lives across the street from the school, heard reports of the approaching tornado and ran to the school, where his 5-year-old foster son, Aiden, attends classes. Rushing believed he would be safer there.
''About two minutes after I got there, the school started coming apart,'' he said.
The students were placed in the bathroom. Others were taken to a nearby church before the storm hit.
The storm laid waste to scores of buildings during its half hour-long deluge. The scene was described as a "an atomic bomb war zone".
A survivor said the tornado sounded like a freight train was coming.
Block after block of the community was in ruins, with heaps of debris piled up where homes used to be. Cars and trucks were left crumpled on the roadside.
Volunteers and emergency crews were searching through debris looking for survivors. Television footage showed teams picking through rubble and twisted metal.
Police Captain Dexter Nelson said downed power lines and open gas lines posed a risk in the aftermath of the system.
Ad Feedback The storm seemed to blow neighbourhoods apart instantly, scattering shards of wood and pieces of insulation across the scarred landscape.
The National Weather Service said the tornado had wind speeds up to 320kmh. The weather service classified it as EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale.
The same suburb was hit hard by a tornado in 1999. That storm had the highest winds ever recorded near the earth's surface.
Yesterday storms slammed into Wichita, Kansas and in Oklahoma, killing two.
The worst of the damage appeared to be at a mobile home park located near Shawnee among gently rolling hills, southeast of Oklahoma City
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May 20, 2013, 09:35:15 PM