Holy crap - another round of tornadoes

For such a quiet season, they seem to be hitting major metropolitan areas. From the Associated Press:

Tornado hits Oklahoma City area in Plains outbreak
A violent storm formed over the prairie west of Oklahoma City late Friday afternoon, dropped a tornado in a suburb and rolled into the state capital as viewers brave enough to remain above ground watched on statewide television. State troopers reported a number of injuries.

Storm chasers with cameras in their car transmitted video showing a number of funnels dropping from the supercell thunderstorm as it passed south of El Reno and into Oklahoma City just south of downtown. Police urged motorists to leave the crosstown Interstate 40 and seek a safe place.

The scene was eerily like that from last week, when blackened skies generated a top-of-the-scale EF5 storm with 210 mph winds, killing 24 people at Moore, on Oklahoma City's south side. Friday's storms were moving just to the north of Moore and appeared not to be as strong as last week's storm.

The storm-chasers got a little too close - from The Weather Channel:

Tornado Hunt Team Takes Direct Hit by Tornado
Meteorologist Mike Bettes was chasing the monster rain-wrapped tornado near El Reno, Okla. when he says the storm picked up the heavy chase SUV and threw it an estimated 200 yards.

"We were ahead of the storm. We stopped to broadcast and I saw a large violent wedge tornado," Bettes said in a live phone interview after he established phone connection after the incident.

"What we were trying to do was just get away from it and get to the south side of it," Bettes said. "But what ended up happening was all three of our vehicles that we chase with were all hit by it."

He remembers being thrown into the air.

"It was like we were floating. We were tumbling. We were airborne at least one point and we were floating. Then we weren't tumbling anymore and we came down hard."

He says the airbags deployed and everyone had their seat belts on.

Bettes and his team members are alive, but they do have minor injuries. They planned to head to a hospital to get team members stitches.

"My life flashed before my eyes."

Talk about a close encounter. Be sure to go here and donate: American Red Cross