Severe storms in Oklahoma

Hope your family and friends are safe Doc.

From CNN -
“At least five people were killed and several others critically injured in Oklahoma on Monday after a severe weather system spawned multiple tornadoes across the state, including a massive twister recorded on video over Norman, Oklahoma.”

It’s just spring time. Typical.

I have friends who used to live in Norman, OK. Tornados are very fond of that place, too. And my artist ex-brother-in-law even made up an entire fictional town called Norman for the people in his paintings to live. chenskyler.blogspot.com/

I was working at the General Motors plant in OKC in May, 2003 when it got hit by a tornado. Luckily everyone made it to the shelter before it hit.

I just read an article about some folks from Kentucky who were traveling in a car in the Norman area at the time and somehow survived:

[quote]The car was picked up by wind twice. Tornadoes popped up on both sides of the road. Miraculously, they reached home unharmed.[/quote] lex18.com/news/harrodsburg-w … -tornadoes

I like this one: youtube.com/watch?v=r7MoZuP3JBo

The leader of the Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne, spent a few hours in my living room … in Norman, that is. Then a tornado came and he rushed outside to record the sounds of everything flying around for his next album.

OK, I made up the second sentence.

Being from Oklahoma, I’ve seen tornadoes. (They didn’t put the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman for nothing.) And I’ve seen what they can do. But they’ve never scared me the way earthquakes do. Maybe it’s just a matter of what you grow up with.

[quote=“cranky laowai”]

Being from Oklahoma, I’ve seen tornadoes. (They didn’t put the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman for nothing.) And I’ve seen what they can do. But they’ve never scared me the way earthquakes do. Maybe it’s just a matter of what you grow up with.[/quote]
Well, for one, you can see twisters coming.

I was in Norman when they filmed that movie, Twister. But I never saw Helen Hunt.

That’s what I tell people in Taiwan who ask me about them. But they still say tornadoes are hao kongbu and earthquakes are mei wenti.

You should’ve checked Misal of India. She was in there a lot. But I was overseas so I never saw her either.

Are we in temp yet?

[quote=“hardball”]Well, for one, you can see twisters coming.[/quote]You’d be surprised how often you cannot see a tornado. Most of the time there’s so much crap in the air that you can’t see shit.

I was born and raised in Kansas, another tornado favorite. When I was five one passed over our farmstead. Wind was blowing like hell, sure, but we really didn’t know there was a tornado nearby until the sound of the wind became something unnatural and a tree blew over. My mother made me and my brother hit the floor in the bathroom. I cheated and peaked out the window just in time to see a 500gal. fuel tank bounce like a basketball across our corral and slam into a horse tank. Whoosh, shitload of water in the air. I also rode out a tornado spreadeagled in a ditch just south of Salina, Kansas. Never saw it coming. Suspected it, sure, but didn’t know one was on the ground until my car felt like it was levitating. Slammed on the brakes and dove into a ditch (probably not a recommended strategy, but it was the only one that came to mind at the time). The sky was the color of very good jade. Glowed jade green, and everything was rotating. But I never saw the tornado.

They’re freaky like that.

EDIT: PS I’d rather endure twenty tornadoes than one bad hurricane. For a plains guy, there’s something utterly unnerving about wind blowing that hard for that long. Exhausting as hell.

[quote=“flike”][quote=“hardball”]Well, for one, you can see twisters coming.[/quote]You’d be surprised how often you cannot see a tornado. Most of the time there’s so much crap in the air that you can’t see shit.

I was born and raised in Kansas, another tornado favorite. When I was five one passed over our farmstead. Wind was blowing like hell, sure, but we really didn’t know there was a tornado nearby until the sound of the wind became something unnatural and a tree blew over. My mother made me and my brother hit the floor in the bathroom. I cheated and peaked out the window just in time to see a 500gal. fuel tank bounce like a basketball across our corral and slam into a horse tank. Whoosh, shitload of water in the air. I also rode out a tornado spreadeagled in a ditch just south of Salina, Kansas. Never saw it coming. Suspected it, sure, but didn’t know one was on the ground until my car felt like it was levitating. Slammed on the brakes and dove into a ditch (probably not a recommended strategy, but it was the only one that came to mind at the time). The sky was the color of very good jade. Glowed jade green, and everything was rotating. But I never saw the tornado.

They’re freaky like that.[/quote]

Well, that’s not really what I meant. Tornadoes don’t just drop out of the clear blue sky. :wink:

Oh, but they do! In '99, right before I left for Taiwan, that’s exactly what happened about two blocks away from my house in AR. I was sharing rent with three Taiwanese friends. I was standing in the door way watching one of them taking her wash off the line when it started to hail. The sky was still blue and we were all amazed.

Then the wind picked up and the sky turned puke green. Soon it was clear that she wouldn’t be able to make it back into the house on her own, so I went to help my friend. It took both of us to get back to the door–we would have been blown away on our own. When we got the door shut, she asked me, “Is that a tornado?”

My stupid reply was that it couldn’t be a tornado on such a beautiful day! Incredulously, I looked out the window at about a thousand leaves spinning in the air high above a house two blocks away. I said, “Well, THAT looks like a tornado.”

It lasted less than five minutes. It piled about three cars onto the roof of one of the houses it was spinning above. You gotta wonder about karma, sometimes, even if you don’t believe in it!

Then the day was lovely again. Only a few hundred thousand dollars worth of damage and a few hundred thousand hailstones left to prove it happened.

I’ve never been close to a tornado. The closest we ever came was one time police cars were driving around the neighborhood with loudspeakers telling everyone to get inside. Nothing happened. No tornado. Our neighbor built a storm shelter in his back yard. What a waste of money. But fun for kids to play around in. You can’t watch TV because the stupid weatherman keeps breaking into programming telling everybody that there’s a severe thunderstorm warning in effect somewhere 200 miles away. Everybody’s crazy.

When I was about five, my big brother (about age 15) and I were in the living room watching TV. It suddenly became pitch black, I couldn’t see a thing. After a brief wait, someone grabbed me (it was still pitch black) and took me out of the room. (I later found out it was my brother who had grabbed me; he had initially forgotten all about me and hauled a**, and he had come back and got me only after my mother had ordered him to. :laughing: )

Then we were all on the floor in the hallway, and I could see a little bit because there was a little light from some unknown source (an outside light, a flashlight, I don’t remember). My mother was praying. Earlier she had told my brother to raise the windows, which he had done, all but one. As the tornado passed, I heard the closed window shatter.

Except for the window, the tornado missed us, but tore hell out of a lot of other places around town. I don’t remember if anyone in town died or was badly injured. This was in Central Louisiana.

About 35 years later, during my lengthy Ageing Student Era, I was in my apartment in an old neighborhood near the State Capitol, studying or pretending to, when the windows began to rattle violently and I heard a loud, low, continuous sound–not quite a roar, but plenty loud–coming from outside. I knew it was some kind of strong wind, but whatever kind it was, it came and went quickly. Then I heard laughter, so I went outside. I saw four, five, maybe six young people, about university age, laughing and dancing around in the street. I asked, “What was that?” Because they didn’t seem alarmed, I thought maybe I had imagined the thing, or at least mentally exaggerated it. But one of them said, “A tornado!” I asked, “Were you out here when it came through?” They said, “Yeah!” and laughed and danced some more (maybe they were going through a free-spirited phase, or something).

There was some stuff strewn around, but I didn’t notice any real damage. Maybe it was a mini-tornado, if that’s possible.

Micro-bursts are a common phenomenon. They can level trees and do lots of other damage. One knocked down a school lunchroom wall on a bunch of kids in NY years back…

So that’s what that was. I’d never heard of it till you mentioned it. Thanks for the info. After reading your post, I googled it and found a Wikipedia article on it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microburst

[quote=“Charlie Jack”]So that’s what that was.[/quote]Not necessarily, it may have been a tornado even if unspotted as such. Probably the best indicator is the direction in which the downed stuff pointed. If all the downed treetops pointed ‘out’ in rays or as if an explosion had knocked 'em all down and out, or away from ground zero, then it was likely a microburst. If the damage was totally random, though, then it was most likely a tornado.

Although it’s kinda weird, and although I’m totally agnostic on the god thing, I gotta admit that a tornado is a profoundly come to Jesus moment. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to submitting all my future decisions to the common personal characteristics - the commandments that is - of the Abrahamic god. A tornado is good old-fashioned, old-Testament, burning bush stuff. For real. Ain’t nothing like the sudden violence of a green sky darkening to black over howling wind and swirling, airborne, yet very large debris to bring a man to thoughts of Glory.

[quote=“flike”][quote=“Charlie Jack”]So that’s what that was.[/quote]Not necessarily, it may have been a tornado even if unspotted as such. Probably the best indicator is the direction in which the downed stuff pointed. If all the downed treetops pointed ‘out’ in rays or as if an explosion had knocked 'em all down and out, or away from ground zero, then it was likely a microburst. If the damage was totally random, though, then it was most likely a tornado.

Although it’s kinda weird, and although I’m totally agnostic on the god thing, I gotta admit that a tornado is a profoundly come to Jesus moment. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to submitting all my future decisions to the common personal characteristics - the commandments that is - of the Abrahamic god. A tornado is good old-fashioned, old-Testament, burning bush stuff. For real. Ain’t nothing like the sudden violence of a green sky darkening to black over howling wind and swirling, airborne, yet very large debris to bring a man to thoughts of Glory.[/quote]

I can dig it. The word awesome is overused these days, but that’s what they are, awesome.