A supercell thunderstorm spawned a deadly F-4 tornado that ripped through Oklahoma City and its suburbs on Monday, and NASA satellites tracked and beamed images of the storm.
As the storm plowed through the city, it left a devastated trail two miles wide and 17 miles long. At publication time, there were 24 confirmed deaths and more than 230 injuries. The images below are from various NASA satellites, which followed the storm from its strike point near Newcastle, Okla., to the hardest-hit town of Moore, Okla.
NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured this first image on May 20, 2013, at 2:40 p.m. CDT, as the tornado roared along its path through Moore, Okla. MODIS is aboard one of the Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites.
The agency also released this annotated version of the image from MODIS. According to NASA, "the twister touched down west of Newcastle at 2:56 p.m. and moved northeast toward Moore."
The NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) GOES-13 satellite captured this image of the storm in relation to the rest of the U.S., which NASA notes resembles an "exclamation mark." The storm is located in the south central area of the country.
How big was the Oklahoma storm system compared to the rest of the world's weather? The GOES-13 satellite also provided this full-globe image of the storm.
This is a nighttime satellite view of Oklahoma City before Monday's tornado, acquired by the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite in the early morning hours on May 20. The image shows the light (both natural and man-made) the city generated at that time.
The image below shows Oklahoma City the night after the storm ravaged the area on May 20. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite took the photo in the early morning on May 21.
