Oklahoma City — 5:25 pm: As another typical day in our family, I was fixing dinner. Local news stations like KFOR and KOCO have warned us to watch out for tornadoes days before every week, especially today. That’s right!
I’ve always loved a good Oklahoma spring storm (minus the tornado factor). For there was a time when I storm-chasers”>storm-chaser wanted to be a time when I was living in Pennsylvania. . When I moved to Oklahoma and have lived through four tornadoes since then, but I still love big thunder. Thunder, lightning, and rain are good for me.
5:27 pm: Literally, without warning, a tornado siren blasts in Bethany, Oklahoma. I rushed to the local news to see where the storm was and where it was headed. The circle was just east of us and headed straight for Wilshire Boulevard, the cross street where I live! As I always do, I gather up my kids, my care, and my insurance documents, and put everything in our custom-made storage bin in our bathroom. My neighbor and family member Tracey rushes up the stairs and threatens to my door: “Let me go! He’s coming!” It’s headed straight for us! “As I lift my eyes to the sky, I can see the whole yellow sky, covered with rain, and like a sick feeling in my stomach comes over me as I see, the roof of the house left the apartment in the street. I shouted: “Everyone in the bathroom, and covered your heads!” /pillow-covers”>pillow-covers as the storm rattled the house like an oncoming train! Both houses were shaken, I prayed that the glass would not break, and that our lives would be spared.
5:30 pm: As the storm passes overhead, the lights in the house begin to flicker. The tornado sirens are now starting to blow in my suburb of Warracres. For those who have been in hurricanes before, you will be 100% correct: There is no sound that you can describe as a hurricane. Some try to describe it as a train, others say that it is like a whistling sound of tinkles perhaps it is a mixture of both, but neither of these descriptions quite fits.
You also feel the pressure against your head in a whirlwind like reaching high altitudes in a jumbo jet! Sometimes it hurts right!
5:35 pm: Pollucis leaves our area and heads straight for Edmund, where he unfortunately reinforces and does more damage. While my boys were watching the news cautiously in the bathroom, we looked outside to see what was going on. Thankfully, everything was intact; no visible damage seen, no broken glass, and all alive. I thought to myself, “How is this possible?” 10 minutes ago, I was eye to eye with this tornado, and now it’s gone. My only explanation is that the vortex “jumped” on us and left us alone. As the children ask, all I could think of was that we were lucky again. Thank God!
May 13 may be another red-letter day in tornado alley, Oklahoma. Spring weather forecasts flooded the local news, and hurricanes reared their ugly heads again as a cold front with a dry line. . but now we are safe.
