The atmosphere never gets a moment’s privacy. It can barely stir enough to move a leaf without some piece of high-tech equipment—often many, many pieces—knowing about it. The U.S. alone has up to 30 satellites at any one moment that devote at least part of their time to monitoring global and national weather patterns; 122 Doppler radar systems scattered across the country looking up from the ground; and a web of computers that just got a massive upgrade—increasing their data-crunching capacity 30-fold—to process the information that all that other hardware gathers.

The National Weather Service has rated the tornado that struck Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon as an EF5, the highest rating with wind speeds estimated at more than 200 miles an hour.

Storms continue to develop across parts of North Texas this afternoon. Several areas west of the Metroplex have already reported heavy rains, hail and high winds at times prompting storm warnings.

Right now the death toll from the massive tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma on May 20 seems—thankfully—to be less than first thought. City officials now say that 24 people have been confirmed dead, down from 51 people last night, due to double counting of some bodies in the confusion. But the new number still includes 9 children, and the toll could rise as rescuers search through the rubble.

(Reuters) - The tornado that slammed into the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people, was upgraded on Tuesday to a rating of EF5, the category reserved for the most damaging twisters on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, the National Weather Service said. The Enhanced Fujita scale is an updated version of an earlier chart to measure the ferocity of tornadoes published in 1971 by University of Chicago professor Ted Fujita. ...

Complete and utter destruction in some parts of Moore, Okla., in the wake of yesterday's deadly tornado confirms the twister was a rare EF-5 — the top of the tornado rating scale, the National Weather Service announced today (May 21).

In an op-ed in the Washington Post this week, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee and a noted climate change skeptic, offered a laundry list of reasons why people who are worried about climate change and fighting plans like the Keystone XL pipeline are hurting American policy and the country's economy.

(Reuters) - The tornado that struck the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore on Monday was a rare EF5, the highest rating the National Weather Service assigns in classifying the strength of tornadoes. An EF5 tornado can pack winds exceeding 200 miles per hour and damage is devastating, the service said. Damage assessment teams also determined that the huge tornado cut a path of approximately 17 miles by 1.3 miles wide. EF5 tornadoes are rare in the United States. The twister in Joplin, Missouri, on May 22, 2011, which killed 161 people, was rated an EF5. ...

Just after 3:00 p.m. (CST) officials with the National Weather Service upgraded the classification of the deadly tornado that struck in Moore, Oklahoma to an EF-5, the strongest storm rank on the enhanced Fujita scale.

The National Weather Service forecast center in Norman, Oklahoma, is located in a five-story building on the south campus of the University of Oklahoma. It is technically on the second floor, but an auditorium  located below it  dips partly underground, so the experience is more like being on the first floor. It has a wall of windows facing west and is neither tornado-proof nor tornado-resistant.