Jimmy Hodges helps Chad Heltcel and his wife, Cassidi, salvage the wreckage of Chad Heltcel’s family home, which was destroyed Monday when a tornado moved through Moore, Okla. The huge tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds.

Brennan Linsley/Associated Press

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Jimmy Hodges helps Chad Heltcel and his wife, Cassidi, salvage the wreckage of Chad Heltcel’s family home, which was destroyed Monday when a tornado moved through Moore, Okla. The huge tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburb, flattening entire neighborhoods and destroying an elementary school with a direct blow as children and teachers huddled against winds.

Brennan Linsley/Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Wind, humidity and rainfall combined precisely to create the massive killer tornado in Moore, Okla. And when they did, the awesome amount of energy released over that city dwarfed the power of the atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima.

Meteorologists contacted by The Associated Press used real time measurements to calculate the energy released during the storm’s life span of almost an hour. Their estimates ranged from 8 times to more than 600 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.

Scientists know the key ingredients that go into a devastating tornado. But they are struggling to figure out why they develop in some big storms and not others. They also are still trying to determine what effects, if any, global warming has on tornadoes.