rob is in and around the chattanooga, tennessee area.. ows with. to keep big winter jobs on track, at&t provided a mobile solution that lets everyone from field workers to accounting, initiate, bill, and track work in real time. you can't live under a dome in minnesota, that's why there's guys like me. [ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities -- helping you do what you do... even better. ♪ wow! it's even bigger than i thought. welcome to progressive. do you guys insure airstreams? yep. everything from travel trailers to mega motor homes. and when your rv is covered, so is your pet. perfect. who wants a picture with flo? i do! i do! do you mind? got to make sure this is -- oh. uh... okay. everybody say "awkward." protecting your family fun. now, that's progressive. call or click today. >>> breaking news. 17 states facing some sort of severe weather through this afternoon and into tonight. what an afternoon it has been as we've been following these tornadoes as they've been ripping eastward. we've been watching them all the way f

over 100 homes across the chattanooga area that were damaged. obviously, there's a lot of people without power. at one point, thousands. it's under 2000 at this point. there are a lot of people that don't have homes to sleep in. they are at area hotels and shelters with friends and family. the grand scheme of things, compared to what's going on in indiana, ohio and kentucky, this pails in comparison. they got hit last year in april as did the folks in northern alabama. it doesn't seem to want to stop here as far as how many storms they got. yesterday, at 1:00 in the afternoon, got another round later in the afternoon and another round in the evening. recovering from this during the day yesterday was very, very frustrating for the victims and the rescue workers. at times, frightening. david? >> looking at that house you are standing at right now, looking at the pictures, that was actually a brick home. any idea on the power of the winds they were dealing with there? >> reporter: you know, by my experience, it's probably an ef-2 tornado, maybe hig

in tennessee, volkswagen is expanding its chattanooga plant. the german auto maker is adding 800 new american jobs as it looks to meet surging demand for its popular passat model. diane eastabrook reports. >> reporter: sales of the passat are booming. this chattanooga plant has been working overtime every day to keep up. >> our plan we are bringing the third shift online in the second half of the year. that will allow us to take the initial capacity up to 150,000 vehicles per year, with still some upside to go up to 170,000 vehicles a year. so, this is a very important next step in terms of the overall growth strategy for vw . >> reporter: what's driving that demand? vw north america c.e.o. jonathan browning says gas prices are at the top of mind with buyers. >> what we tend to see is people shifting their focus into passenger cars and into smaller passenger cars. passat is perfectly positioned for that, and the clean diesel passat. which is built here in chattanooga. >> reporter: adding to capacity at its southern tennessee plant means vw will

this is georgia and here is chattanooga. to the west of chattanooga, could travel to the north. remember, what he was talking about, this is a very hard hit area when tuscaloosa was hit. they kept going in this area. that's the damage that he's talking about. so there's the storm. when you see these storms moving on the radar and they go back and they move, that's only to show you the direction that they are going. obviously they are not going back and traveling. the last frame that you see will always be the current frame when they go backwards to the southwest. that's the oldest frame and then the newest frame here. it would make a difference if you're living here and it was coming this way. that is why we show you the animation. >> do we have any sense how big these tornadoes are? >> and they have the first damage, that's the crazy part about income a newsroom. you hear about damage and send your crews out and what you're seeing here is 50, 80, 100 mile-per-hour winds. i believe this storm got much more intense to the east of 10 or 20 miles and it's going to be significant da

rob marciano, our meteorologist, is in the chattanooga area. i'd like for him to bring us up to speed, and mayor, he probably las a question or two as well. rob, where are you? and what are you seeing? >> reporter: like the mayor described, we are northeast in, a community of about 20,000 people, a really nice suburb, basically, of chattanooga. you mentioned 40 to 50 homes damaged. in some cases like the one behind me completely destroyed. the gentleman who lives in this home thankfully, and his wife were not home. that would have been a tough one to ride out. there he is, a navy veteran, but you see beyond the foundation of that home. across that lake, more damage. the path of this thing is about 200 yards wide, wolf. not only are we see substantial damage, but trees are snapped in half. 1234e6 by my guess, at least an ef-2, if not an ef-3 storm. there are basically two ways to get to some of the damaged area. the first a access road we encountered, we were not allowed down. that was scary, because emts were setting up triage, ten not so serio

he's been covered the devastation outside chattanooga, tennessee. rob?eporter: clean-up efforts back under way. people are getting back out. they had to stop with all clean-up efforts for a time yesterday because they got hit with back-to-back storms after the twister came through a few hours later. a few rounds came through later including hail and a tornado twister and a cell after that that had circulation down to our south. so you see they're bringing in all sorts of heavy equipment, large and small, manpower as well. the buzz saws are humming also. they're being strict with who they let in and out of these places because the power companies are trying to get the lanes back up. obviously if your home is destroyed, there's nothing to hook up to. but they want to get things lined up. this is the lake i'm talking about. i would. mind retiring here. this would be a nice place to retire. the entire neighborhood literally blown to pieces. a number of injuries coming out of that neighborhood. i was talking with a gentleman. he was not here, he was having lu

elsewhere union armies were capturing nashville, new orleans, memphis, vicksburg, port hudson, chattanooga, and for the purposes of our story, the colored troops in virginia were overwhelming ly recruited n the northern states and were no more use than at first than an equal number of new white regiments. this is an important point. because as i found out while researching the book, escaped slaves were a source of expert local knowledge to union armies going at least back to the landing in south carolina in the fall of 1861. an escaped slave known only for us as brutus viewsed captain gilmore, an officer of engineers. he called brutus "the most intelligent slave i have met here, quite familiar with the riffers and creeks between savannah city and tibe,island. he made his escape last week in a canoe." two years later when the commander of a union raid up the yazoo river in mississippi wanted to send a message to his headquarters in vicksburg, two sashlg ents of the third mississippi colored cavalry dressed as slaves, which they had been until recently, and delivered the message. in march 18

this is out of chattanooga. this is from our ireporter ted gottwald. you hear that term a lot, golf ball sized hail. but i've also seen close-ups of bits of hail people are holding in chattanooga and it is at least golf ball-sized hail. in some cases, it's larger. this just a couple of examples of what's coming in. before i go here, i want to give you a sense of what we've got on cnn.com, as well. we have images from all over the country that have been affected here. i'm going to slice through a few of these so you can get a sense of how many places and how many people have been affected through yao these states that we're talking to you about today. we're seeing destroyed homes, destroyed likelihoods, destroyed roads, impassable roads. real quickly, if you want to help people, go to cnn.com/impact. we have a section here focusing on helping victims. if you don't have photos or videos but you want to share your story, i'm on social media all day. i'm right here camped out in the news room. my blog is cnn.com/josh. share those stories, share your videos

a little farther to the north on up, the third storm of the day for chattanooga right there, tornado warning on that, especially just off to the east. and then farther on up we're seeing pretty big weather still in eastern kentucky. that may be where the biggest tornado was all day in west liberty, kentucky. it stayed on the ground almost 60 miles as a big tornado and then moved into west virginia proper. farther up to the north as you'd expect, the rain back farther off to the west, though. this is what caused this weather. it is snowing. in fact blizzard-like conditions across parts of wisconsin. that's the cold air. down to the south, that's the warm air. warm air, cold air don't like to mix. the cold air pushes the warm air up into the air. it causes bubbles, bubbles cause storms and storms can rotate. they're called mesocyclones, supercells and they put down super big tornados sometimes. >> how long into the evening is this expected to continue? >> we don't expect this to be over until at least 11:00 when temperatures go down at least 10 degrees from where they are now. the more

that's just outside the chattanooga area. you can see some of the damage caused by this.states, this was a widespread event. this is the convective outlook. on a big tornado day, meteorologists show you a map like this. we'll say this is the big bull's-eye, this is where we think the worst of that severe weather will be. that was the high risk issued. this will take you through time and show you all the tornados that popped up through here. those were all the reports. 98 of thome. if you include the wind and hail damage reports we get 15 states. the forecast very good here from the national weather service. unfortunately we had a lot of damage. one big storm that moved through impacting all these millions of people. >> incredible. 17 million, i think, was the latest number i heard. jacqui jeras, thanks so much. in an instant, the tornados destroyed homes, turned lives upside down. here is what living through a tornado is like in one survivor's own words. >> everywhere you look a bus into a building, a mobile home fleetly flattened. everything was beating around her heads.

this was shot in downtown chattanooga. he had been walking with his wrestling team when the violence starts. the pieces of hail -- i've seen some close-ups of the hail that struck chattanooga. in some cases to me, looks like even bigger than golf balls. you can -- you can feel the pounding when you watch the video. let me tell you all, we only show videos in which we're confident that people did not go to any danger at all and did what they were told to do, heeding all the warnings authorities told them to heed. take a look at this. what we have here is a series of still photos that show you some of the devastation partly from yesterday, some from this morning, and now that we're seeing more of the aftermath and also from recent days. this right here is madison county, alabama. i'm going to scroll through some of these photos before i jump to one more thing. in so many cases people lost homes, livelihoods, impassable roads. schools closed. this was at one time someone's front door. cars smashed into little bits. all of thi

let's go to rob marciano just outside of chattanooga, tennessee. what's it like there today? >> i tell you what, it's been a rough eight hours here in eastern tennessee. it all started with a tornadic thunderstorm that rolled through northern alabama around lunch time, made its way through the border and right across chattanooga. by 1:00, it touched down east of where we are here in tennessee. some of the pictures coming out of there, multiple homes damaged if not destroyed. 40 to 50 of them. we had nine or ten injuries of people at area hospitals, and 15 or so people that were treated and released on the scene. so far, the good news is even with all of the damage, there have been zero fatalities. search and rescue ku cue crews continue, but we had two other storms that have come through just in the last hour and a half. those operations have been suspended. one of those storms dropped a tremendous amount of hail on us right here, up to an inch or so in diameter hail. the hail core blocked our vision of what was a tornado that was reported just to our south by a couple miles.

rome, georgia, chattanooga and gatlinburg, tennessee. tornado warnings now.lus charleston, west virginia. weather authorities warn you to take cover immediately in those towns. the storm chaser dan whitcher is driving near gel co, tennessee, which is along i-75. far northeastern reaches of tennessee, kind of above knoxville, he was all over kentucky and tennessee today and watched that massive storm pass right by him. tell us what you have seen. >> hey, well, tolerable rains. dangerous day for people across the country and for tennessee and these super cells that we have been watching on radar i mean, they are ridiculous. they are huge and a lot of rotation with them. >> shepard: have you seen damage today or have you been on the other side of these? >> i have actually been to the side of them. so i haven't seen any of the damage i did just come from a cell that we reported a strong rotating wall cloud and what looked to be a tornado which was then -- took out the power and it took out -- hitting hail right now. that was a pretty amazing site. if you had seen

let's go to rob marciano just outside of chattanooga, tennessee. what's it like there today? >> i tell you what, it's been a rough eight hours here in eastern tennessee. it all started with a tornadic thunderstorm that rolled through northern alabama around lunch time, made its way through the border and right across chattanooga. by 1:00, it touched down east of where we are here in tennessee. some of the pictures coming out of there, multiple homes damaged if not destroyed. 40 to 50 of them. we had nine or ten injuries of people at area hospitals, and 15 or so people that were treated and released on the scene. so far, the good news is even with all of the damage, there have been zero fatalities. search and rescue crews continue, but we had two other storms that have come through just in the last hour and a half. those operations have been suspended. one of those storms dropped a tremendous amount of hail on us right here, up to an inch or so in diameter hail. the hail core blocked our vision of what was a tornado that was reported just to our south by a couple miles. and no

storm chasers got a glimpse of this funnel cloud outside of chattanooga, tennessee. and this afternoon clouds pushed across nashville an area the national weather service warned could be one of the hardest hit. >> we are talking about tornadoes, a big threat today. very strong winds, damaging winds that can be really as violent as a tornado, do as much damage at least as a weak tornado. >> reporter: perspective they are keenly aware of in harrisburg, illinois where tornado sirens and ominous, dark clouds this morning provided a painful reminder of what happened here just two days ago. and the possibility of what could be next. an example of just how serious these conditions could be, as a precaution more than 20 school districts across tornado alley sent students home early today. in nashville, jay gray, news 4. >> really powerful storms. doug has been tracking them all day. are we done with this yet, folks out there and us too? >> not even close. they're not done with it yet, jim. i think we'll be done here. we aren't expecting any severe weather here and don't expe

reported near i-24 just to the southeast of chattanooga.classic signature of what a tornado cell looks like. right there, the hanging down right there, the comma right there and then red and the green back and forth together. when you see them together that means winds going one way and wind going the other way. the only way that happens is if a tornado is spinning that weather around. that's what's happening right now about four miles south of rob marciano's location. i did southbound him an e-mail so he's going to be in good shape. they'll get inside. from montgomery southward, seeing now alabama start to light up. mississippi light up. for most of the day it was indiana, kentucky and parts of tennessee. now these southern states are getting the tornado warnings going. now that the heat of the day is gone, they may start to calm down a little bit. but we're still in the warm part especially central time zone. it's only 5:30. this is still the hottest part of the day, the hottest part of the day is when the weather is the most violent. ano

would we have ever stormed the beaches at normandy if we saw hitler wearing a glenn miller chattanooga cho-choo t-shirt. and here's a second danger of the two dangers i just mentioned moments ago, danger two, this guy might not love america. he could just be a hipster wearing that t-shirt ironically. after all, that's where irey comes from, iran. he's turning this into a farce in farsi. it was already bad enough that iran was hiding their nuclear intentions under ground. now they could be hiding under a thick layer of sarcasm. and the real threat is, folks, our hipsters could form a secret alliance with their hipsters. >> oh, yeah, that's going to happen. >> >> stephen: oh, good, good, it's our hipster audience member. hipster, i need to know, will you hipsters form a secret alliance with iran? >> yeah, we're totally going to do that. >> so you are? >> sure. down with the great satan. this is kind of important. why can't you just be direct. >> well, i guess i have a problem with trusting people, stephen, so i use sarcasm to mask my own insecurities. >> oh. [laughter] really? >> yeah, i

furthermore i would like to reiterate as a district aide to president, i live in mission delores in chattanooga street. i am concerned if it moves into district 9, not only will that lead to an exceptional -- unacceptably high population, it would leave district 8 somewhat, especially my area in the castro which is comprised of moot -- mostly renters. the inclusion of the corridor is extremely important. furthermore, i would like to echo the concerns of the speaker before me. if we are moving all the portal into district 10 it would offset the hard work that task force has accomplished. this would be a disservice to the community groups that have come forward. at multiple meetings and expressed their concern that is so well reflected in this current map. thank you. vice-chair lam: thank you. next speaker. >> these individuals here wanted to ask if they could use their time jointly to present a video that is queued up. vice-chair lam: i did get that earlier request. we are requesting that each speaker have two minutes and at the two-minute mark we will stop the video where is that and pick up fo

he is live in chattanooga, tennessee, with this report.porter: good morning to you, jenna. big news coming out of the volkswagon today. the company announcing 800 new jobs at this plant here in chattanooga. volkswagon's billion dollar chattanooga plant already employs 2700. it has plenty of room for expansion. >> their sister brand audi talked about building cars in north america. it is not difficult to see how the future plays out. >> goodness is far more important than the outward appearance. >> reporter: in 1960s americans fell in love with the iconic vw beetle. with the '90s the company's one sizes fits all vehicles did not always speak the language of u.s. consumers. >> there is a word for this driving experience. >> historically vw brands had strong base in the u.s. more recently we lost our way. so this growth strategy for the u.s. has been about refocusing on the u.s. marketplace which is very, very important market globally. >> ♪ . >> reporter: this darth vader super bowl ad for the new passat speaks to american consumers but so d

southeast tennessee, the chattanooga territory, if you're traveling 59 towards chattanooga, highway 64into the chattanooga area, there are rough storms, give it 30 minutes to get past chattanooga before you start head thank direction. if you need to travel on the scholls, rustleville, leeten, lawrence county, morgan county, things are okay now. we do expect another eruption of showers and thunderstorms later on this afternoon. right now, 1:13, and we're just kind of flying along here, and determining what had happened this morning with our knews crews and still watching the weather throughout the after that, so since we don't have any other active tornado warnings, let's go to michelle stark at the news desk for an update on what we have seen so far. >> jason, we'll reset and give people an overview of where we're at this morning. we know there's significant damage in limestone county and madison county. we have our crews on the scene, you've seen the live images coming in but we'll continue to update you as we get the latest numbers. jon: because those are the faces you're not accusto

. >> reporter: in chattanooga, at least 20 homes were ripped off their foundation. as this monster system took aim at indiana, we caught sight of the state's biggest twister, just as it was forming. the time is 2:08. you've got to see this circulation. it is happening. the atmosphere is angry right now. you can see it. as the afternoon wore on, there was no letup. >> when you hear us tell you get to your basement, i want you to not walk. i want you to run down into your storm shelter. >> reporter: so, why did this happen? there are a few answers. but one is the position of the storm. it had plenty of heat and moisture to suck up with the gulf of mexico. that's what fueled the long-track thunderstorms. it had cold, dry air from the northwest. an incredible difference in temperature over a short distance. and most importantly, it had wind shear, the one element you need for tornadoes. before today, authorities have counted about 120 tornadoes, 50% more than we normally have this time of year. communities from tennessee to indiana are still reeling from the impact of s