Oklahoma Tornado Alert Gave Residents 36 Minutes Warning
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Residents of Moore had about 36 minutes to prepare for a mile-wide tornado that flattened the Oklahoma City suburb, killing two dozen people, according to the National Weather Service.
The federal agency issued its first warning for residents to seek shelter at 2:40 p.m. local time on May 20, 16 minutes before the tornado touched down about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of the city, said David Andra, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Norman, Oklahoma. The twister reached Moore at 3:16 p.m., he said, topping the service’s scale for tornadoes with winds of more than 200 miles per hour.