Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Twisters, here they come

It is not even spring yet and the ice have not completely melted, and we already had a severe spring like storm. A few tornadoes spawned yesterday Tuesday February 11. There were 4 confirmed touchdowns in the whole state and one was responsible for wiping out the whole neighborhood and killing 8 people.

To most people, it was too early to have this kind of weather, so not everyone paid much attention. My husband said, when you are in Oklahoma, you have to respect the weather, it changes in minutes.

We heard over the news for days that we might have a bad weather coming our way from southern California and the jet stream was pumping in a lot of warm moisture from the gulf of Mexico, so very good ingredients for a severe storm. Everyone was expecting it, but not in the form of tornadoes.

Expecting to have rain and thunderstorms later in the day, my husband I went to town to get some supplies and to get some medicine for his flu. He had been under the weather for a couple of days. We went anyway, just in case we might have flash flooding with the expected rain.

It was noon when we got home and turned on the TV and saw that the weatherman was telling us that some little cells were developing on the western side of the state. We got moving, putting stuff in the underground cellar, just in case we need to get inside and spend some time there. It took me the whole afternoon to put together all the important documents, change of clothes, water, snack etc. inside the cellar. We had to make sure the flash lights were working, the battery powered TV was working, the scanner was working as well as the cell phones charged.

Then within minutes, the storm cells developed into nasty cells. (We watch on the TV radars). Then everything got more chaotic. Wall clouds dropping finger like tails as the tornado formed. Warning sirens went off and the tornado cut across the west side of the city and moving fast towards northeast. This happened around 2.55pm. I was watching it, but it was far from us, however the whole line of thunderstorm was moving east northeast, sooner or later it would come to us.

Every TV station was engrossed in what was happening in the city center, and they were just focusing it there with crews everywhere. When it was getting dark another big storm cells that had capability of producing a tornado was spotted south of the state moving in from Texas. This was the deadliest one. It ravaged the whole town and area near Ardmore killing 8 people and still counting. This was a dangerous one as it happened at 7:30pm when it was already dark.

Today, people are going around in daze and looking at the devastation. The tornado was 3/4 mile wide and was traveling on the ground for 25 miles, destroying everything in its path.

I am scared, but alhamdulillah we are alright except we had tremendous lightning, rain and hails and strong wind. I just pray that this is the only one we have for the whole year.

I could not get online to tell my friends since Tuesday and now glad to say that we are doing alright. My internet connection came on at noon today

6 comments:

Nani Shahabudin said...

Alhamdulillah, you and husband are ok. Take care!

Kak Ezza@makcik Blogger said...

Kak,
Takut betul bila saya baca entry ni..
Kat sini ribut sikit pun dah kecut perut,ini kan pulak taufan ni...mintak ..
di jauh kan laa

You take care ok...sama gak ngan BB..doa banyak banyak..s\dan saya pun berdoa untuk keselamatan akak berdua di sana...

Mutiara said...

Anne and Ezzah, Thank you for your concern and doa. We do pay a lot of attention to weather changes here.

Zue Murphy said...

We are having strong wind today in Pa. But I cannot imagine how scary it will be if we are having hurricane or tornadoes like in your area. Be safe and take care.

Arc said...

syukur semua selamat. suspen baca citer AM.

arc

Mutiara said...

Zue: I am scared too. Well, I hear up north too you people have power down due to the same storm system that moved past here.

Arc: Alhamdulillah, tq