Last monday started off very much like today. It had been so muggy and humid, which it really shouldn't be here. Oklahoma has a dry heat, you shouldn't feel like you are taking a hot shower when you step outside, but that's what it's like. I feel like I'm in Florida again. This is the first sign it will be a bad day.
I talked before about how I follow everything on Facebook, so I was watching that a lot in the morning. The National Weather Service posts video updates on there every few hours, and those are really good to watch for the outlook, which on Monday (and today! ekkkk) was a moderate chance of storms. They have good explanations about what slight, moderate, and high mean, which I won't pretend to really know, but what stuck out to me was that there was a greater chance of more concentrated storms in that area, which of coarse we were in. Another thing that the local news station pointed out was that once the storms started popping up, they were going to get severe real fast. This stuck with me. I knew that once they started, it was time to go home. They were projected to start much earlier then on Sunday, which in our area was around 2 pm. That was pretty accurate.
I think storms started forming down south around 1:30, and I started getting nervous. My coworker told me to tough it out and stay at least until 2:30, but by about 1:55 storms started forming near Chickasha and Bridge Creek. Now from watching all the severe coverage all spring long, I knew storms from Chickasha could either track to Moore or Norman. I live in Moore and work in Norman, so that's bad news all around. I also knew from reading about May 3rd, that storms in Bridge Creek usually track to Moore. So with all this, and the warning that they would intensify and become severe quick, I got a really bad feeling, called HR and told them I was going home. I was feeling so rushed/panicked I could barely even send out an email. I was probably speeding the whole way home, because on the radio they were saying there was now some really bad hail heading towards Moore. At that point I still didn't think it would be a tornado, I just didn't want to deal with crazy hail damage on my car.
I was amazed at how quick the weather changed. By the time I got home it was looking pretty dark. I took this picture to send to my family. You can even see how windy it was by the way the trees are blowing.
And then about 4 hours later when we got back it looked like this:
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So I get home. I've been listening to the radio and I know we have a storm coming, so I want to put the news on. I walk in and J is playing video games. Now usually I love watching him play (I'm a pretty cool girlfriend if I say so myself :) ) but not when we need to be 'weather aware.' I got pretty crazy at him at this point, but I gave him a little time, and then I think it was the sirens starting to go off that made him change it to the news. They went off pretty early that day. By this time the storm was getting pretty intense out near Newcastle. I had changed out of my work clothes, and really just felt like I should put my sneakers on. I don't know what it was, I just felt it. So I sat down and started putting them on.
J was like, "what are you doing?"
Me: "I just feel like I should put these on"
J: "Should I put mine on?"
Me: "Maybe, I just feel like I should have them on"
So he put his on. I think he knew I was starting to freak out, and was just riding it out with me, because I think if he tried to calm me down or talk me down, Crazy L would have come out. He knows me better than I know myself sometimes!
I called my mom. No answer. Called my dad. No answer. Called my twin (my sister who is 5 years younger, but she's still my twin) and finally got her. She had just got home that day from DC. I don't think any of them knew we were getting bad weather, which is why I like to call and inform them so in case anything happens they don't freak out. At some point my mom called and I was talking to her. I remember being on the phone with her as the tornado tried to form. The cloud kept lowering then going back up. I was talking with J at the same time trying to figure out if we should just go to a friend's house. During all this, the tornado actually formed. When storms pop up, the local stations send their helicopter and storm chasers so we had lots of visuals. At first it was just a skinny rope. I remember saying to J something along the lines of "oh, it's a small one, we will be fine. The chances of getting a direct hit from that would be crazy small." Apparently, watching a season of storm chasers makes me an expert! Not. Because then that thing just blew up. It got huge. It was a wedge now. Again Mike Morgan started repeating: "This is a violent tornado. You will NOT survive if you are not underground." Okay, well we aren't in the path right now. Just wait and see.
During this I got off the phone with my mom to call the other office on that side of OKC. No answer.
They started saying on the news that it was going along the path of the May 3rd tornado. Okay, we're fine then. We aren't in or too close to that path.
I remember saying "Okay, the only way it will hit us now is if it just goes straight East."
Mike Morgan: "It's going East now."
I could insert many swear words here.
J had been trying to get a hold of some friends. We had friends further east with a shelter, but by this time there was a hail storm we would have to go through, and the friend was also saying it was going north of us now. But I had started to inwardly panic. I had a really bad feeling growing. I'm not a quick thinker. I need a few moments to process information before I make decisions, so at this point I think I was processing and trying to decide what to do. We don't have a shelter, if it hits us, we won't survive. I had been saying the day before that if an F4 was coming towards us, I would just take my chances in the car. But did I really have the strength to do that?
I was up walking/pancing and near the window. It had been windy, and raining and hailing off and on a bit, but all of a sudden it just stopped. It was eerie. I told J, "look, everything stopped!" I wasn't crazy, he saw it too. Then I just knew we were in it's path, and we needed to leave. I said "we're leaving." I grabbed just my bag and keys, J grabbed his wallet. I was just like, I'll drive, let's go. We got in my car, and booked it out of there. Cars were speeding by. As we pulled out I looked left to make sure it wasn't right there, and just saw a black cloud. It looked like a really really hard downpour. You couldn't actually see the tornado, but we knew it was in there. I was just speeding. We headed south. I started faltering here, and just wanted to pull over since we were out of the way now. I did pull over once, but J said we had to just keep going. These things are so unpredictable, it could turn. So we kept going south. There were people in Norman just pulled over watching. You could just see this mass of darkness over Moore. I really just wanted to stop and breath. I was shaking, or at least felt like it. My foot was starting to feel like jelly. But J kept me going. We had friends in Norman with a shelter, we would go there. When we got there, they weren't home. Cell service was getting spotty. We drove around a bit more. I took this as we were driving. You can't really see it, but you can see just the darkness.
Then our friend got through, and gave us the code to the house so we could get in to the garage and use the shelter. By this time, it was starting to clear. We checked on their neighbor next door, to let her know we had the shelter open if she needed it. When she answered the door, all I saw was the TV behind her and the video of the destruction. At these moments, you don't worry about ediquette and politeness. I asked her, "Is that the damage? Can we come see it?" Up North, this may have been too forth coming, but in OK, people welcome you in like they've known you forever. I got J, we watched the footage. It was unbelievable. Then they were showing OUR neighborhood. The lady paused it so we could see. J was convinced the house was gone, but I insisted I could see it and the roof was still black. I even took pictures of the tv. They showed Orr family farm. Destroyed. Houses, just destroyed. Whole neighborhoods, destroyed. Schools. Words really can't describe it. I just wanted to get home. At this point, there wasn't a thought about any more storms. In my mind, severe weather season was over. Doesn't something like this just take all that power up? Shouldn't there be nothing left now? Just take me home.
We left, and drove back to Moore. Driving up Sooner, it was creepy. There was insulation and just pieces of stuff caught in fences and along the roadside, and it just got worse. By the time we got close to our neighborhood, we could tell we wouldn't be able to get through. It was debris and police. The only way was to go back roads, which we did. I was barely paying attention to what I was driving over. There was just debris everywhere. I didn't even recognize the house when we pulled up from the back. The fence was gone. There was so much debris in the yard. But we were lucky. Our house was still standing. The houses across the street were really bad, and you could see between them (since there were no more fences) that it was just rubble where the houses on the next street had stood just hours before. I was in shock. I really just couldn't believe this really happened. Looking down the street, you could see buildings and openness that shouldn't be there. There were supposed to be trees and houses. I was standing out back taking pictures for the insurance when our neighbor came up to me.
"What are you doing, you don't live there."
"Yes I do."
Luckly J came out and vouched for me. Because when you have fences, you have barriers and you don't see who is right next door to you. This tornado took all the fences down.
I guess people were already walking though peeking in people's houses. Whether it was too make sure no one was trapped, or potential looters, we don't know. But what I do know is our neighbors were looking out for us!
We had to assess the damage. Again we were lucky, our clothes, daily essentials, and valuables were okay. We just had to get them out. You could start smelling gas so it was bad news. So we started packing. I didn't have any service and my phone was dying. My work cell was getting some texts from my coworkers, and I asked one to post on FB that I was okay since I couldn't get through to my family. I knew that at some point I did tell them we were leaving, but I couldn't get through to them since it hit. So we packed what we could, and headed to our friends. By the time we were done, we were starving, in shock (me), and we probably smelled. But we have awesome friends who took us in, feed us, and gave us a place to stay for as long as we needed. They have an 8 month old daughter, and parents coming to town, but didn't hesitate to take us. And when J had to go out of town for the weekend on an important pre-planned trip, they made me feel at home and welcomed. I think J just attracts awesome people to him! :)
Needless to say, I couldn't sleep very well that night. I was exhausted; my heart was pounding, my body was still stressed out from being so on edge and in survival mode. And the weird feeling was that because I was in shock, it was like I knew the extent of the devastation, and how people were so much worse than us, had lost their homes and even loved ones, but I couldn't cry. It just wouldn't come. I had no emotional release to really feel what had happened, and it's been slow coming ever since. I know I was strong through this, but can I really heal without breaking down?
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