Over the past week, iReporters have helped CNN viewers put a human face on the storms and tornadoes ravaging the South and Midwest United States.

A lot of people were still asleep on Wednesday when a tornado hit Harrisburg, Illinois, but nurse practitioner Jane Harper was working at Harrisburg Medical Center and snapped images of the destruction. She described the chaotic scene with CNN's Suzanne Malveaux and again with CNN's Brooke Baldwin.

"Sometimes we get desensitized after looking at home after home that was destroyed," says CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras, who frequently highlights iReports on TV.  "When you hear from iReporters, when you hear the frightening experience they're going through, it really makes put it into perspective for our viewers that this affected people’s lives."

When a series of twisters hit Henryville, Indiana, on Friday, CNN crews headed to the scene to report on the damage. But one of the most powerful pieces of footage came from iReporter Chad Hinton, who was driving on Indiana when he spotted "a huge tornado in the sky." CNN's Josh Levs, who was on the air covering images sent into CNN including iReports, featured Hinton's video on TV Saturday, along with Virginia Military Institute student Ted Gottwald's iReport footage of massive hail in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

"We were showing all this devastation in Henryville, but what this iReporter had captured was video of the tornado. He was looking at it," Levs says. "That piece of footage put in context all the devastation that we saw in Henryville."

Powerful footage also came in from Kevin Welz, who captured the tornado dropping down in Henryville, Indiana. He spoke live with Don Lemon Saturday night.

"It was ... a wrong place at the right time type of situation," Welz says. "I should have been looking for cover but by the time that thought entered my head it was almost over."

Levs and Jeras want to remind iReporters that getting video should never come before their safety. "Don't go into danger to take any videos," Levs says. "I won’t show it if I have the sense that that person went into danger."