A massive supercell tornado accompanied by hail as big as tennis balls tore through Kansas and Oklahoma, killing at least two people and catapulting debris almost four miles up into the sky.
Up to 20,000 customers lost power and two people died in Cole, Oklahoma, as a result of the huge twister. Entire homes were leveled while trees were reduced to tree stumps. According to Ryan Barnes, a National Weather Service meteorologist, the tornado striking Cole lasted for almost half an hour.
MASSIVE tornado producing supercell near Slaughterville, Oklahoma.
This doesn’t even seem real. #okwx @VortexChasing pic.twitter.com/hS3mLg32Bl
— Zachary Hall (@WxZachary) April 20, 2023
Extreme Meteorologist @ReedTimmerAccu captured intense video of a #tornado moving through Cole, Oklahoma. #OKwx
Timmer reported at least four homes were damaged. https://t.co/AskARxxrkj pic.twitter.com/6yIdunHC8n
— AccuWeather (@accuweather) April 20, 2023
AccuWeather's @BillWadell recorded as a 3-inch hail hit his windshield and nearly burst into the truck in Blanchard, OK. #OKwx pic.twitter.com/LfXEzAAyQ9
— AccuWeather (@accuweather) April 20, 2023
Extreme meteorologist @ReedTimmerAccu reports as a severe-warned supercell produces baseball-sized hail in Oklahoma. #OKwx pic.twitter.com/tZgHq06FAw
— AccuWeather (@accuweather) April 20, 2023
FIRST LIGHT:
Cole Oklahoma Damage from the strong #tornado that impacted yesterday afternoon. #okwx #wxtwitter @SevereStudios pic.twitter.com/Yzri7H6pgC— Jordan Hall (@JordanHallWX) April 20, 2023
“Looked like a bomb went off,” one local resident told CBS News.
Speaking of the two deaths attributed to the tornado, Scott Gibbons of the McClain County Sheriff’s Department said, “It is reasonable to expect possibly more, based on the damage that we’ve seen thus far.”
He said a man and woman had been killed, with the man found dead and the woman found injured but later died on her way to a medical facility for treatment. Gibbons told CNN that first responders had been apprised that people had been trapped in shelters, and teams were searching across a 10-mile wide path.
Supercell tornadoes, which occur more frequently in the central U.S., contain a “deep and persistent rotating updraft called a mesocyclone,” the National Weather Service explains. Mesocyclones usually range from two to six miles in diameter. Supercell tornadoes move quickly and require directional wind shear between the earth and 20,000 feet up.
KOCO News 5 reported nine tornadoes touched down in Oklahoma Wednesday night.
Another tornado touched down 60 miles east of Cole in Shawnee; striking Oklahoma Baptist University, where it even shredded the walls of buildings on campus. “My immediate reaction was like, holy crap,” one apparent student said. “There was a huge tree that was overturned. There was glass that was like stained glass, beautiful, shattered.”
“It looked like a bomb went off”: A tornado that tore through Cole, Oklahoma, a small town of roughly 600 people, is blamed for killing at least two people and decimating houses.
It is the latest deadly outbreak in the 2023 tornado season. pic.twitter.com/5c0d82NKLh
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) April 20, 2023
The Storm Prediction Center warned that areas ranging from Texas to southern Illinois as well as Little Rock, Arkansas, and Shreveport, Louisiana, faced a Level 2 out of 5 “slight risk” of severe weather.