On Tuesday, we brought you footage of a Tornado Intercept Vehicle taking on a twister in Kansas. Wednesday brings us a full 10 minutes of video from tornado chasers in Moore, Oklahoma, where tornadoes recently caused two-dozen fatalities and inflicted severe property damage.
It's unclear what kind of vehicle is being used in the new Oklahoma footage, but the daredevils filming it maintain a safe distance from the vortex as cars on the other side of the road shot past going in the opposite direction.
Although the new footage does not make use of a Tornado Intercept Vehicle to get closer to the storm, the perspective it captures is arguably far more visceral and terrifying. During the course of the 10 minutes that cameras are rolling, we can observe the tornado forming, growing larger and beginning to wreak utter havoc.
Toward the end of the clip, the driver can be heard saying, "This is going F5 right now, it just crossed the river. I think I seen two cars get picked up off the bridge and thrown in the air. This thing is violent. People have to be underground."
The storm chasers responsible for the footage identify themselves as Justin Cox and Chance Coldiron and the name of their team appears to be Fast Unit 53. The YouTube video does not allow embedding so we're not able to repost it, but you can find the original footage here. The filmmakers offered the following description:
Raw footage of Fast Unit 53's (Chance Coldiron & Justin Cox) coverage of the Moore tornado that was used by KOCO5 during the event on May 20th, 2013. We watched as the tornado formed in front of us and rapidly intensified then moved across highway 37 in Newcastle, OK. Then the tornado continued to intensify as it tracked across the Canadian River and the interstate 44 bridge. The monster tornado was filmed from close range off the I-44 bridge north of Newcastle as it was headed for Moore.
Fast Unit 53 is not the only team capturing breathtaking tornado footage near Moore, Oklahoma. A group going by the name Basehunters also uploaded the following clip that shows a deadly tornado spinning over a school.
