Tornadoes 2011: Watch NASA's Incredible Footage From Space (VIDEO)

Americans following the recent tornadoes ravaging through the midwest have been captivated by the shocking amateur and professional footage constantly emerging from the region over the past several weeks.

And while shots from the ground strive to capture the intensity of these natural disasters, the following clip taken by the GOES-13 satellite offers a sense of just how massive these storms can get.

The footage, depicting aerial views from space between May 20 and May 25, shows the tornado as it travels from Arkansas, Illinois and Missouri into Mississippi, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Indiana. This includes the storms that prompted the horrific Joplin, Mo. tornado on May 22 and the Oklahoma event two days later.

The GOES-13 is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association operated Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite series, which NASA utilizes to create images and animations.

WATCH:

Comments

[dewaynem]

08:25 AM on 06/07/2011

You cannot see a tornado in the images on the video...maybe the cloud formations which spawned the tornado, but not the actual tornado. A tornado would be hidden by cloud-cover and would be much too small to be seen from that distance in space.

[myles048]

12:03 PM on 05/30/2011

Why would Obama be cutting this satellite capability?
http://larouchepac.com/node/18297

[Robbert Carr]

02:18 AM on 05/29/2011

I didn't see any tomatoes. Oh nevermind

[Selena Makeba]

03:50 PM on 05/28/2011

Unfortunately as an ex-US Navy Weather Forecaster, there are some glaring errors within this photo-shopped mess.

Tornadoes do not spawn out of clear air. In order for a tornado to form there must be layers and layers of clouds which would automatically obscure it from view from above. At the base of these clouds will be a layer called CB Mammatus. It is from these heavily laden clouds that the actual tornadoes form.

So the question we need to ask (now that we are thinking and awake) is why the deception?

Do they believe that showing us this mocked-up video will 'prove' that these tornadoes sprouted on their own and without an help from H.A.A.R.P?

Also, you can attempt to answer this post or not (I dont care because I will not be back) but WTF is a HUFFPOST SUPER USER? Again if we just think about it for a moment...

Obviously a SUPER USER is someone who is here to promote Huffington Post's ideas and ridicule any that disagree. Do you really want to waste your precious time with this type of yellow-journalism?

I appreciate your reading and possibly thinking about my points... but I won't waste any more of my energy on these HUFFPOST SUPER TROLLS.

[Northstar707]

12:26 AM on 05/28/2011

Is it truth or fiction that the repub house cut all funding for weather satellites this week? That would be a real boehner.

[Bennie Richburg]

06:19 PM on 05/27/2011

Amazing, wow!

[GG NV]

01:30 AM on 05/27/2011

What it means is that there is a large cold air mass mixing with a very warm air mass. When these two air masses combine with large temperature differences fireworks will happen, hence the tornadoes.

For two years in a row we have had a very cold and snowy spring. Summers have been short for us. Record snow pack in the Sierra will mean some fast roaring rivers well into summer.

[Hope Richardson]

10:55 PM on 05/26/2011

Am I just stupid, or am I not the only one who would have liked to have had the tornado outlined? Because I couldn't tell where it was.

[DG3]

09:56 PM on 05/26/2011

There are no tornadoes to be seen here. And the description of one tornado going through 8 different states is bogus as well.

[kadyak]

12:23 AM on 05/27/2011

The tornados are there - theyare within the intense white blobs (clouds). They are too small to see, besides being hidden by the white blobs.

[weather fan]

11:56 AM on 05/28/2011

You can see the tornado that hit Joplin. If you look in the upper left corner there is the date and time. You can pause the video and move it to 1745 on the 22nd of May. In the center of the storm you can see what looks like a hole. That is the tornado.

[dewaynem]

08:32 AM on 06/07/2011

Tornadoes aren't like hurricanes where a clearly defined eye can be seen from space. Besides, tornadoes are at most a couple miles wide. From the distance of the satellite image you would not be able to see anything 2 miles wide, let alone an "eye" of the tornado the size of a pin dot.

[TweetToniLynn]

09:49 PM on 05/26/2011

Not happy that I am now forced to huffingtonpost.CA....

I want to make my own choice...

[GrahamInCanada]

10:22 PM on 05/26/2011

They fixed that late this afternoon. If any other web presence made the same mistake as they made with huffingtonpost.ca, coverage here would be exquisitely critical, but they fixed it quietly and hope nobody will notice.

Notice the new pull down menu on the Front Page tab.

Incredibly, they apologized for not including this "new functionality" when they blocked all Canadian IPs from hp.com.

Until they launch of hp.ca, functionality included that Canadian IPs could access hp.com, so it wasn't new.

But that's the fix.

[TweetToniLynn]

05:58 AM on 05/27/2011

thnx for the info!

[incorrigible]

08:12 PM on 05/26/2011

camping's such an A. so is global warming

[Raccoon1]

07:52 PM on 05/26/2011

It appears that the flooding Mississippi is highly visible, unless I'm seeing it wrong.

[JB-IN]

07:43 PM on 05/26/2011

Quote: "The GOES-13 is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association operated Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite series, which NASA utilizes to create images and animations."

GOES data is used for MUCH more than just "creating images and animations". You can thank GOES for hurricane forcasts, storm now-casting, climatology....... and that's just the stuff they show us on the Weather Channel. EVERY weather forcaster in the western hemisphere uses GOES data. Forcasts from GOES saves thousands of lives every year. Keep the GOTP from cutting NASA/NOAA.

[pene]

05:59 PM on 05/26/2011

nature seeks to restore balance. that doesn't mean that the multiverse doesn't embody randomness, only that on this planet a fine balance has made it possible for oxygen-based life to thrive and this planet will seek to restore that balance until the "center [no longer
] holds."

[roninkai]

07:51 PM on 05/26/2011

Nature does not "seek" anything.
It is an unstoppable monster.
We are the fleas on its back.

[saileyboy]

08:58 PM on 05/26/2011

I would agree - nature seeks to restore a balance. On a different level I hope that gravity acts like electricity - heat increases electrical resistance - and thus as we create too much CO2 and heat the earth we actually make a slight resistance that nudges the planet on a slightly longer orbital path which in turns cools the planet. - Thus my notion of nature seeking to restore balance.

BTW - this is my theory and have not found anything similar or suggestive.

[Somethinuglythiswaycomes]

07:53 PM on 05/27/2011

Earth is a living organism. I believe it is trying to heal itself.

[kadyak]

05:02 PM on 05/26/2011

is this really footage of tea party brain activity?

[limonista]

07:09 PM on 05/26/2011

Ha!!!

[Raccoon1]

07:52 PM on 05/26/2011

The what?