Tornado season

I had been awake since 3:30 yesterday morning (no reason, just couldn't sleep), had done errands, and mowed the lawn, so I had been tired. 

We went to bed pretty early, only to be awakened by the storm...and the sirens.

It was 11 pm.

The sirens go off when there is a tornado ANYWHERE in the county, so we got up and turned on the tv. 

It's pretty rare for a tornado to come through Oklahoma City, so I wasn't overly concerned, but then, the climate IS changing. 

There was a little one a mile from us a few years ago, when Annabel was a baby,  that blew the roofs off of some structures at the fair grounds.  That one MIGHT have only been a microburst.  We never heard for sure that it was actually a tornado.

Anyway, within minutes of getting up last night, it seemed like the violence of the storm got stronger....close lightening, thunder that made the house shake.  The power flashed off and on again.

Then we shook off the sleep fog, and connected with what was being said on the news...

This tornado had been in our area. 

The frantic weather man was talking about 10th street (we live on 15th).  He was talking about 23rd street (that's part of our regular travels to do errands, and so forth).

The twister turned out to actually be about 2 miles away by the time we tuned in (it was moving VERY fast), closer to the state capitol area, and it was moving further away-- at about 40 miles per hour. 

It lifted a few minutes later, and the tornado warning was canceled.

HOWEVER, we found out this morning that, while we were being awakened by the sirens, our tornado had been near the fair grounds (a mile away, as previously mentioned--10th street), then to around 23rd and Villa (which is somewhat less than a 1/2 a mile away), then lifted, then dropped again near the Paseo district (where there is an art festival this weekend), before moving on toward the zoo, and the capitol.

So, before we even woke up, it had had the potential of being RIGHT over our heads.

Our twister was small, so the damage it caused was relatively minimal, with no injuries or fatalities reported this morning.  They're calling it an EF2.

The art festival is underway this morning, with the artists cleaning up their booths, assessing lost artworks, putting their tents back up,  and getting ready for the crowd.

We might go later.  We try to go every year.

There are areas of mild to moderate damage around us, and all along the storm's path across the state, but our neighborhood is fine.

UNFORTUNATELY, the same storm created multiple tornadoes... some were what they call "spin up" tornadoes, that are typically short-lived, but can be devastating. 

A suburb to the west of us was hit hard by a spin up about a half hour before the storm came our way. 

People died.

That tornado was only on the ground for about a mile, but in that mile were trailer parks, businesses.... and a motel.

They're saying it came out of the sky like a drill bit. No warning.



We dodged a weather bullet.