river and his grandmother, jimmie blake, and the rest of the folks in bartlesville are trying to putl in the office building. >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: the tornado did this to their home. powerful enough to blow a family photo with river's grandmother in it 21 miles away, to danny lemmons' cow pastures. so this is it? >> yep. there was a bunch of plywood and insulation laying around. i said, "i know who these people are." >> reporter: so far this year, there have been more than 1,000 reports of tornadoes in this nation. meteorologists rate these tornadoes on a scale that goes from 0 to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. the one that hit here was near the top of that scale: winds up to 200 miles an hour. >> yes, this is where we build instruments, and we put them onto vehicles so that we can go in the field and study storms. >> reporter: harold brooks studies severe storms for the national weather service. i think when people see these tornadoes, they think at some point the buildings are going to get just reconstructed. >> there are small towns that have been almost destroyed completely by tornadoes and