Thunderstorms in February

Yesterday was quite, eh, eventful?

It's February 10, Jake and I are at Crown Heights Christian Church doing our civic duty, voting for chair of the Oklahoma City Public School Board. It's stormy, the kind of weather I love. Really I just love the way cool humidity feels. Jake has the car started and is listening to NPR. I'm buckling Coco in her car seat. As I close her door I hear the emergency signal come on the radio I walk around and get into the car, shut the door. Oklahoma County is under a tornado warning. Jake puts Fit in reverse - and then it happens.

The tornado sirens go off.

I don't really know how to describe the swell of tornado sirens going off throughout a large city. I love listening to it at noon on sunny Saturday afternoons when they test the system, but when the sky is dark and the clouds are rolling, it's eerie. Everything stops for a few seconds.

When our few second pause was over, Jake put Fit into drive and pulled back into the parking spot to go into the church if we needed to. That's when "the radio" said where the tornado would potentially touch down. It was about 10 miles from us. We decided to go home, about a mile away. It was 2:12, 2:17 according to Fit, which runs five minutes ahead of schedule. I kept thinking about Oklahoma City high schools releasing at 2:10.

When we were driving passed the pedestrians, I wondered what it would be like to hear the sirens but not have anything telling you what was going on. Almost every car had their windows down - watching and listening.

We got home and turned on the news. The first tornado hit 10 miles away. Two tornadoes would follow the same path as the first. Edmond, a suburb to our north, was hit the hardest in the metro area. Not long after the third tornado went through, we lost power. It was out for about three hours. We brought our battery powered radio out to the living room, tried two different batteries in it, no luck. I called Vaughn, my father-in-law, who was at the fire station getting ready for a fire drill [he's a volunteer fire fighter], to see if we could get an update. He said it just looked like lots of wind and rain, but no tornadoes in our area. Phew.

Tracey, my mother-in-law called a little while later to give us an update. She kept us updated...not just on the weather, but, of course, The Biggest Loser as well. She also told us that some people had died as the storm went through Lone Grove, OK. This morning the total number of casualties is 8.

Photo by David McDaniel, The Oklahoman

Photo by David McDaniel, The Oklahoman

Photo by Bryan Terry, The Oklahoman

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