From space: video of five days of tornadoes

Over the past few days, huge storms have exploded over the US midwest. The GOES 13 geostationary weather satellite had a birds-eye view of the whole thing, and its images were used to make animation showing five days of meteorological action: Wow. It's positively creepy how those cells burst into life with what looks like no trigger or precursor. They're just suddenly there. Terrifying. I was in Kansas over the weekend for my nephew's college graduation (congrats Derek!), and literally minutes before the ceremony was to start there was a tornado warning. We had to huddle in the building's basement for about 45 minutes before the all-clear was sounded; the tornado spotted was to the northwest and missed us (although right as the warning started I was able to get a picture of the weird rolling mammatus clouds overhead). After the ceremony we saw the storm raging to the north ...