As many of you know through local and national media, Oklahoma was hit very hard this tornado season. Yes...here in Oklahoma we have a season for tornado's. It comes around every year just like summer, fall, winter and spring, we Oklahoman's just expect it. On May 20th it was no different. All of the local weather stations had been warning all of us for days that we were in for a very dangerous day. They had even pin pointed the estimated time that the storms would hit. On this day Lonnie and I were in Ardmore miles away from the danger but my mom and several of our employee's were at the studio. I didn't want to take any chances so I called mom and told her to get to my house. ( We have a safe room) And I called the studio and sent all of the employee's home. Lonnie and I were able to watch the news on my I-phone weather app while we were on the road. Now, I have lived in Oklahoma most all of my life and I have seen many tornado's come and go and I have seen the devastation that they leave behind...BUT I have never witnessed anything like what happened in Moore!!
Lonnie and I live in Norman, which is about 15 miles south of Moore. We do a lot of shopping, dinning and of course we frequent "The Warren Theater". As the night went on and we continued to watch the destruction and began to hear about the fatalities we were shocked! Shocked could not even describe how we felt when we actually saw the damage for ourselves.
We use to go bowling here. The building is completely leveled!
And of course, if you follow me on facebook you know we go to the Warren Theater often. It is still standing and has since opened. Lonnie and I went and watched "Fast and Furious" last Thursday. It was so different.
Just when the clean up started and we didn't think it could get any worse than that...May 31 happened. Again the local news had been warning us all day about the possibilities of tornado's. Living in tornado alley you know that most tornado's track north-northeast. I've never heard of one hooking back south. Well there is a first for everything and it just happened to be a little to close for comfort for me!!
My cousin Barbara is a Red Cross Director and was in town for the May 20 tornado. We had plans to go out to eat at a Japanese Restaurant. I wanted to take her to one in the city but with the storms north of us Lonnie said that we better stay around here. Again we were keeping up with the weather via my I-phone weather app. We got seated and ordered our meal. Everything was going well...glass of wine...Japanese chef entertainment...then we heard the sirens! Ok, ok I thought, they are being very cautious from the last storm, no need to panic! Right? Um..Wrong. The weather man is telling us that the tornado took a sharp right hook and was headed right for us!! Still I was calm. We paid our bill, chugged our wine and headed to the car to go home. ( The safe room!) Again I have seen a lot of tornado's but the feeling in the air and the look in the sky's were very different! It was very scary!
I was still very calm at this point and then we came around the corner and saw bumper to bumper traffic!! Apparently everyone was headed South to try and out run the tornado!
Ok at this point people were acting a fool and cutting other people off, jumping the median to drive the wrong way on the wrong side of the road, and ... well, this is the point I panicked!! The sirens were going off, people were honking and there was no feeling what so ever in the air. That's the best way that I can describe it! We made it home safe and sound just very shaken, but we were alive and safe.
The rebuilding will continue for years! But it will happen! That is one thing you can say about Oklahoma is that we do not give up! We will rebuild and come back stronger!
GOD BLESS OKLAHOMA!
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