Videos show tornadoes sweeping across Oklahoma (2024)

Several tornadoes touched down in Oklahoma on Thursday, leaving destruction in their wake as they tore across the state.

Tornado warnings were put in place across various counties, mostly south of Oklahoma City. They touched down in ​​the town of Cole, moving through Noble and Goldsby, with others near Lake Thunderbird.

Tornadoes are violently rotating columns of air that extend from a thunderstorm, eventually touching the ground. The winds inside these vortexes usually hit around 120 mph, but have been measured at more than 300 mph. On average, the U.S. experiences around 1,200 tornadoes per year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

There could have been up to 10 or 15 tornadoes throughout the night, according to Oklahoma news outlet KFOR. Videos uploaded to social media by locals showed the tornadoes stretching down to meet the ground, and some of the damage they caused.

"WeatherNation Field Correspondent Erik Fox was on location when a #tornado briefly touched down near Goldsby, OK this evening," tweeted @WeatherNation, while stormchaser @CoreyGerkenWX also uploaded a video of the Goldsby vortex.

"Tornado touch down in Norman, Oklahoma, at night near Lake Thunderbird," tweeted @StormChasingVid, attaching a YouTube video of the tornado.

Tornado season has begun, with many of the storms having popped up throughout the country so far this year. It peaks in May and early June in states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The season starts earlier on the Gulf Coast, and later into June and July in the northern Plains and upper Midwest, including North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota. Those states regularly hit are called "Tornado Alley".

Tornadoes can be extremely dangerous, tearing apart buildings and severely injuring bystanders. The National Weather Service (NWS) states that, each year, tornadoes cause 80 deaths and 1,500 injuries in the U.S.

No injuries have yet been reported from the Oklahoma tornadoes. However, the Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company (OG&E) reported more than 13,000 customers had lost power by around 9 p.m. local time, just after a tornado swept through the town of Noble.

Twitter user @JadeoradeWx tweeted a video of the damage caused in Noble on Thursday.

The tornado warnings across the state were removed in succession as the risk lessened. Tornadoes are often hard to predict, as they can form in mere minutes, meaning that forecasters have to look closely at rapidly changing environmental cues.

"If they see rotation starting to develop in a storm, and that storm is in an environment that is particularly favorable for tornado formation, they will often issue a warning," Jana Houser, an associate professor of meteorology at Ohio State University, previously told Newsweek. "The challenge is we don't know with strong confidence whether or not that storm will actually produce a tornado. This is why there ends up being a lot of false alarms. Many storms which are warned, do not end up actually producing tornadoes."

"Scientists still don't quite understand all of the nuances in figuring this out and differentiating between storms that are occurring in essentially the exact same environment. But one produces a tornado and another neighboring storm does not, even when they're separated by distances that are relatively small," Houser said. "So it's the part of looking at a storm and figuring out if it's going to produce a tornado in the next 15 minutes that really is challenging!"

Do you have an animal or nature story to share with Newsweek? Do you have a question about tornadoes? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.