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The tornado that ripped through El Reno, Okla., on Friday was the widest tornado ever recorded and had winds that hit nearly 300 miles per hour, close to the highest wind speed ever measured, the National Weather Service reported Tuesday.

The record-setting twister was 2.6 miles wide at its maximum and carved a 16.2 mile path across mostly rural land west of Oklahoma City. It tops the previous record-holding tornado, which hit Hallam, Neb., on May 22, 2004, and was 2.5 miles wide.

The National Weather Service also upgraded the tornado to its most powerful class, an EF-5 ranking, on Tuesday. The agency upgraded the ranking from an EF-3 after surveying damage from the twister. The tornado and subsequent flooding killed 18 people, including four storm chasers.

El Reno now joins the Moore, Okla., tornado as the second EF-5 to hit Oklahoma in less than two weeks, another record for the state, according to the National Weather Service’s Norman, Okla., office.

Winds during Friday’s giant twister also nearly broke records.

A mobile doppler radar at the University of Oklahoma measured winds greater than 295 miles an hour at several times and locations within along the south side of the tornado, according to the Oklahoman.

Howard Bluestein, a University of Oklahoma professor, told The Washington Post that two of his graduate students clocked wind speeds as high as 296 miles per hour on their mobile doppler unit while observing the storm from the east.

The World Meteorological Organization requires direct measurements from anemometers for official wind speeds, meaning the strongest wind gust on record is officially 235 miles per hour in tropical cyclone Olive at Barrow Island, Australia, in 1996. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/0604/Mammoth-Oklahoma-tor
nado-was-widest-ever-recorded-almost-strongest-too-video?nav=87-frontpage-entryNineItem

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