Outbreak

Did you know there was a tornado outbreak this past Tuesday? If you lived in the Midwest, you did, because you were probably directly involved somehow. (Was that seriously just this past week?)

Our weathermen had been pushing warnings since before the weekend that severe storms may be coming and that we should be "weather aware" for the beginning of the week. By Monday the Weather Channel had our entire state covered in white with a 9 out of 10 risk for tornados, which is the same rating Arkansas had a few weeks prior during their tornado outbreak. By Tuesday morning all of the state was prepared and waiting, wondering what would be occurring that afternoon.

I have to admit - there's still a piece of me that loves to watch the weather brew.

By Tuesday afternoon you could start to feel the anxiety tingling amidst our community. I was at work and it was the topic of the day amongst our customers as well as ourselves. I had just returned from watching the weather at lunch where it was announcing 3:00 as the beginning of the watch.

Around 4:00 my boss had pulled up radar on our work computers and we noticed it was starting to begin. But we weren't getting video or (at this point) even very regular updates on the radio station, so we were unaware of the chaos that was beginning in Canton.

(I haven't listened to all these videos, and due to what's occurring in them, there may be language. Warning for all those with little ones around.)



By 4:15 my coworker called in to give us warning that the weathermen were going crazy and Bob & I were crowded around our computer watching circle after circle pop up on the radar. There was no sound - all we had to go off of was where the spinning circles appeared to be via radar. By 4:30 there were six to seven cyclones. And by 4:50 we closed up early. You could tell everyone was staying home and battened down - we had had very few customers in the past few hours.

So right at 5:00 when I arrived home, my grandmother was a bit frazzled from listening to reports about tornado after tornado, fielding phone calls and working on dinner. But at this point, I only had one family that I knew of to be concerned about being directly in its path (and mind you, that's enough.)

Then they beginning announcing Moore.

I have several family members in Moore. Most of them went through the May 3rd F5 back in 1999. The other option (depending on which way the storm turned) was Norman, which is where my bosses were currently on the road headed home. We saw the tornado from Chickasaw that was headed their way and I was shocked. They were no longer announcing a tornado warning - the weathermen were now calling for a tornado emergency, which I had never heard called before. My cousins got out of town and flew to our house.



The tornado that was headed for Moore lifted - but Chickasaw, El Reno, Goldsby, Piedmont... to really think about what occurred blows my mind.

By this point we had already packed and I had already thrown everything into the car. Had the large wedge tornado not lifted at Moore, it was headed our direction. And with all the other craziness happening, we would be ready at a moment's notice to run to the storm shelter.



So how close did any of this come to us?
Well. I didn't think it was that close at the time. I was on the phone with the rest of my cousins in Moore - who were telling us they were safe and that it was all over - when the sirens went off here and I had to jump off the phone with them to see what was going on. But they were announcing a tornado on television in our county nowhere near us. So we shrugged. Our weathermen were acting like it was no big deal. Thirty minutes after the sirens went off (I say thirty, it was probably fifteen) they announced something out by our local mall and we blinked. The mall being less than ten minutes from our house and all. But that was it - one blip, nothing else mentioned, no big deal made. Everything got still and then suddenly our tree swung sideways and torrential rain poured. And two minutes later tops, it was over.
So now - looking back on everything - I know that was when the tornado went through. But even though we were flipping back and forth between two channels, we heard nothing but a blip about the mall and a blip about debris being dropped at a local exit. And then at the 10:00 news, a station was out at a local community surveying the heavy damage it had sustained. Which was bizarre.



That above video actually terrifies me a bit, because we had no idea that was going on in all of the mess. I was looking for the other videos tonight and came across it. This was the first I had seen of the local tornado and its a bit more violent than I expected. I did know it had picked up a semi and threw it - the man driving is still amazingly alive.

This is just crazy:


So, all of that said, all of mine and those I know are fine. Thankfully, no one was hurt or even sustained any damage to their property, which we praise God for. We're starting to settle into summer weather - you can feel the heat setting in and therefore these chances are dwindling. Which I think most everyone is okay with for awhile.