How do meteorologists measure the width of a tornado at any given moment?

Question

So, this one confuses me. Since you obviously can’t get close while the tornado is raging, how do they go about measuring the width? Like, for example, how did they know that the Moore, Oklahoma F5 Tornado peaked at over a mile in width?

In: Other

Answer 1

By measuring the width of the path of destruction it left on the ground. There isn’t exactly hard boundary deciding how big it is, as the wind speeds are different in different parts of a tornado, and falls off at the edges.