Nightly News   |  April 04, 2012

Winds strong enough to twirl a tractor trailer

Weather Channel meteorologist Dr. Greg Forbes explains how the tornadoes managed to lift the trucks, suspending them in the air. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> moment talking about the stunning pictures of the airborne 18-wheeler truck trailers captured on live television . some of the most dramatic live footage captured on television, and it tells us so much how about the storms work and their awesome destructive story. this part of the story from gabe gutierrez.

>> this is something i have never seen before.

>> the twister, nearly 1,000 feet high, takes aimed as a field with over 400 trucks and trailers. an extraordinary sight even for one of the nation's most formidable tornado experts.

>> here, two tractor trailer bodies have been tossed into the air, 50 to 100 feet high, then they fall to the dwrounld. they don't just have horizontal winds. they have winds going upward, in this case, over 100 miles per hour. that's how it's able to lev tate the trailer beds. then they come tumbling down to the ground and rebound. i have never seen video that showed clearly the entire box trailers being levitated, breaking up in pieces, we know it's happened, but this is the best video i have seen to show how vid udly this can occur.

>> for darryl hamlin, it's hard to forget.

>> it's overwhelming to see what mother nature can do.

>> he huddled with three dozen of his coworkers at the great dane trucking company. some of the trailers tossed over 100 yards. to give you an idea of the sheer power of the storms, here are two big rigs stacked on a tree. each weighed about 20,000 pounds. clearly, this cleanup won't be easy. as crews begin to move the wreckage --