Imagine this image only dark navy blue with a white thunderhead behind the wall cloud. That's what I got to watch the whole way home with cloud to ground lightning surrounding me.Ok, it wasn't a hurricane, but it was pretty awful...
Around 4:10, I heard thunder. Thunder?! There were only a few fluffy clouds in the sky on my lunch break around 12:30. I log onto weather.com and see that in the past 10 minutes or so, a storm popped out of nowhere! Well, this is Oklahoma, so it's happened before. Well, this storm was only moving about 10 mph and it had some large hail. This gave me a choice, drive home immediately and get home before it hits or wait it out, which could take awhile if it doesn't go any faster. Well, by that point, all the things I could do yesterday was done so I opted to just go home.
I get in the car and start driving past Penn Square mall. I look over and there is a large white wall cloud with a large white thunderhead behind it in front of a large, dark navy cloud that took up the whole sky. I started to see cloud to ground lightning so I started driving faster. Of course I live in Oklahoma which means people were taking their time. Lovely. I by the time I get to I-35 (about 15 minutes from home without rush hour traffic), there is cloud to ground lightning in front as well as behind me! Also, that wall cloud I mentioned was coming closer to me! I got off and 23rd street which means I was about 3 miles west and 2 miles north of my apartment. About that time, I call my mom because I'm freaking out a little bit. I had turned on the radio to listen to the weather, then the signal was lost. That is NOT a good sign. I was stopped at a traffic light, speaking with my mother and I look to the right of me and see two men with a video camera looking straight ahead. I turn to the left and see the large wall cloud rotating not even 1/2 a mile from me!!! I started to get antsy and the lightning starting getting brighter and the thunder was booming! I happened to stop at EVERY traffic light on the way home! At 23rd and Sooner Road, exactly 2 miles North of my apartment, I noticed that the wind picked up and dust was flying everywhere! I kept thinking "GO PEOPLE GO!!! TRAFFIC RULES DON'T MATTER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD!!!!!!" I pull into my apartment and jump out of the car. As I start to run to the apartment building, I notice the rotating wall cloud is above the apartment complex!! I start running up the stairs to the apartment. Halfway up, a BRIGHT flash and, less than a second later, a LARGE BOOM nearly knocked me off my feet and the tornado sirens start going off. I burst through the apartment door and Phil is lounging on the couch playing the Wii. "TURN ON THE TV NOW PHIL!!!" I screamed. "I'm almost done with this part though..." "Phil, there is a ROTATING WALL CLOUD ABOVE THE APARTMENT COMPLEX AND THE SIRENS ARE GOING OFF!!!
TURN ON THE NEWS NOW!!!" "Ok, Ok". He slowly turned the Wii off, turned the cable on "Oh, it's channel 3 right?" "DEAR LORD PHIL! HURRY!" Right as he turns it to the right channel, the meterologist says there's rotation at Reno and Sunnylane. We're at Reno and Sooner, 1 mile east of this. The storm is moving South, South East at the time. "Oh ok, we should get going". We grabbed Petey and started down the stairs. We couldn't grab Cleo, because it would have taken 15 minutes to get her in some kind of container.
Now, the plan in the complex is, if you are in an upstairs apartment, you go to your neighbors apartment downstairs. Well, no one was home so we ran across the parking lot into the laundry mat. The thunder was deafening and I was worried that, if the laundry room was hit, we'd possibly have lots of machines falling on us. We ran to the car and headed east to the community center in Midwest City. We could see the clouds quickly gaining on us and there was dust blowing everywhere. Then, rain started pouring down. We got to the intersection near the community center and not only was the light out, you could barely see the first car in line on the opposite end of the intersection. We somehow got to the parking lot, ran inside just has the hail started coming down HARD. Apparently it got up to 3" in diameter. We stayed in the lobby area for about 20 minutes or so when the hail finally stopped. The sky was still cloudy, but it was lighter than it had been. We jogged to our car because Phil was hungry for dinner (boys =P). When we were driving home, all of the traffic lights from the community center to our place were out. There was visible roof damage at the nearby mall and there were a few down trees in the complex. Luckily our cars only had minor hail damage and nothing was damaged in our apartment. In fact, our pouch furniture didn't even get knocked over. Our power was out, but our water was still running so we lit some candles and had our dinner. I was going to make mashed potatoes to go with the pot roast, but without electricity, we couldn't. It was still tasty :)
Afterwards, Phil and I called our parents to let them know we were ok. Phil noticed lots of helicopters and firetrucks going nearby so we went out to investigate. Hey, I'm still half-Okie =P The intersection of Sooner and Reno had one of the lights fly off the pole and its still lying on the grass in front of the "Welcome to Midwest City" sign. There was also 3 down telephone poles just 1/2 miles from our complex. In the neighborhood behind our complex, lots of fences were blown down and lots of trees had broken branches. We went to the church to see if they had power since it was getting cloudy in the west again. However, the church lost power too, so it didn't do us any good. On our way home, I heard on the radio that it hit eastern Norman so I called Mikey. He was at the laundromat during his laundry. He said the windows faced the east so he could see the dark clouds, but nothing happened. It didn't even RAIN where he was!! My goodness, God really looks out for the boy. Anyways, so he was good and safe so I felt better. We noticed some terrible damage at a local furniture store on our way back. Luckily for us, the power came back around 8:30 or so and our cable worked again in time for the 10 o'clock news. Apparently, 2 of the 3 local stations had some damage at the station so they didn't have a 6pm broadcast, which also explained why I lost the radio signal earlier. The worst damage in Midwest City was to Midwest City High School and that furniture store I mentioned. Both lost their roofs and the furniture store had some really banged up cars in the lot. Fortunately no one has been reported as injured because of this storm. They aren't calling it a tornado because there wasn't technically a debris cloud, but there was rotation and straight-line winds up to 80mph. They did show a car that was pushed off the highway because of the wind so I considered myself lucky.
So that was my evening. That's the closest to the "action" I've ever been and boy did it scare the pants off of me! I'm definitely ready to get out of this state. I mean, I know tornadoes can happen everywhere, but this is Tornado Alley. Plus, I told Phil this is one of the times I REALLY wish we had a house. Of course his reply was "So our house could blow away?" No Mr. Smarty-Pants, so we can have our cars in a garage and have a safe room to run into if we need to seek shelter. I'm just glad things worked out so that nothing too terrible happened to us or anyone else. It did storm some more last night so I didn't fall asleep until about 12:30, but it wasn't even 1/4 of what happened earlier.
Thank you loving Lord, for protecting my family and myself. Thank you for protecting everyone in the area so that no one was injured. Please bless those city workers who got people's power back in a timely manner so that they could rest in peace. You are truly a gracious God. Amen.
Peace to you,
"Rock You Like A Hurricane" by Scorpions
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