Stories of survival from a rash of killer tornadoes across the nation's midsection are just beginning to come out, but when perhaps the strongest of the twisters hit Mayflower, Ark., on Sunday, photographer Brian Emfinger was ready to document the whole thing from angles that would have been impossible for a storm chaser like him to get just a few years ago.
Emfinger, who has been chasing storms in the Midwest since he was in middle school, and whose work is featured on Little Rock's KATV, deployed a small drone to survey the damage right after the tornado moved through the area just south of Mayflower.
The video below provides a panoramic view of the devastation that could have come only from a news helicopter in the last decade. Due to the less intrusive nature of a miniature drone, the shots Emfinger was able to gather provide a surprisingly intimate, close-up view of the destruction left in the tornado's path.
About one minute into the video, the drone gets close enough that we're able to easily see the group of responders picking through rubble on the side of a highway.