Some impressive imagery shared by NASA showing a time lapse of the severe weather around the US MidWest

On March 2, 2012, NOAA put its GOES-13 satellite into rapid scan mode, meaning that imagery was taken every 5 minutes to carefully monitor the developing severe weather system in the Midwest U.S. This animation shows the visible imagery from the morning and afternoon of March 2nd. In the 1km visible imagery, the overshoooting cloud tops associated with severe weather and tornado reports can be seen. Even at dawn, signs of severe weather were present in the satellite imagery. Because visible satellite imagery is only available in the daylight hours, the cloud imagery fades in from east to west as the sun rises over the land.