7 Days

Since the last time I managed to post anything here.

Froggy, you must be slipping.  You haven't reminded me once.  :)

Last Thursday, there was a really bad storm.  It was pretty much totally unexpected and it was actually starting to become tornadic at one point.

There was almost no warning.  It was lunchtime and I had thought about going out for lunch but decided to stay in and I'm glad I did.  We had rain chances but nothing bad was expected.  The first hint was when my cell phone started making the Alert sound - it is very loud and very shrill.  The entire screen said "TORNADO WARNING. TORNADO IN THE AREA."  It wasn't raining or anything, I turned the radio on and they were doing the normal mid-afternoon show.  I thought that the cell service provider must have had a problem and sent out a bad message by mistake.  And that's when the Tornado Sirens started sounding.  When they go off, it's best to pay attention and take cover.  The boss was in his office but had heard my phone alert so he was coming up the hallway to see what the noise was, when the sirens started.  He ran back towards his office for his phone and I was already in the area we decided is the safest spot - the bathroom which is on a north outside wall but the center of the building is a glassed-in atrium and the glass makes it a very unsafe spot.  Bill called me at that point, he was at home and was watching the noon news.  They were on the storm warning by that point and they were calling out the exact area of Tulsa I work in as being in the firing line of a rotating cloud.  He was telling me what the news said and I was telling the Boss.  Then the cloud started to move more south and not southeast, and the rotation stopped.  At that point, they cancelled the tornado warning but were still putting out a lot of warnings in the direction the cloud was moving because of the fact the cloud had shown rotation already.

The Boss opened the garage door to check the sky and by that time,the cloud was right there.  It was well east of us and we were safe, but it was still pretty scary to look at.  These pictures were taken with my cell phone and make it look a lot lighter than it actually was.

No, these are not "Hey Y'all Redneck Last Word pictures!

After the cloud had moved a little further south, that's when the real storm hit.  The one that was behind the rotation.  The rain was very sudden and very, very heavy.  The wind was even worse.  There were trees ripped out of the ground all over Tulsa and the surrounding areas, trees that were broken into pieces, limbs thrown everywhere.  It was a very, very severe storm.  I've seen rain forced sideways by wind before, but not like this.  Of course, Otter was at J's house and that particular town was right in the direction the cloud and storm were headed next.  They were aware of the weather and stayed inside, ready to take cover.  J's house was ok, but there were two incidents that were confirmed to be the work of a small tornado in the general area.

When I got home, which took a while because of several street lights that were out and also because of debris in the road in some spots, we still had power but we also had limbs down in the back yard.  But  there was one place in particular, a church in south Tulsa that literally had a wall ripped off just because of the wind.  Bill's dad had a tree limb down in their back yard - but they don't have any trees.  It was split off of a neighbor's tree, then the wind carried it over the fence and into their yard.  It was not a small limb, either.  Parts of the Tulsa area and surrounding area just had power restored today, Monday.  Bill cut up the limbs from our tree Saturday and also helped his dad with the one in his yard.  Most of it is now in our woodpile, Bill thinks we got about 1/3 of a rick out of it.

Yesterday, Sunday, Bill mowed the yard.  I was standing beside the rock garden when a grasshopper bounced by me.  And landed right in the center of a zigzag spider's web on the trellis!  I had not even seen the web, it was so well camoflauged in the honeysuckle.  Pretty much as soon as the grasshopper landed, the spider was on it.  She moved like lightning and had the grasshopper wrapped completely in silk in just a couple of seconds.  It was amazing to watch her.  Then she moved it to another spot in the web and then a few hours later when I was walking around the yard with the beagle I checked on the spider and she was happily consuming the grasshopper's innards which were probably liquified by that point.  I hope she stays around.  She's probably not quite quarter sized yet, and they can get much bigger.  She can stay in our trellis and eat all the bugs she wants!

Close. Way Too Close.

Last night, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, we unexpectedly had to play this.  We got over 15 spaces!

Including the one about circulation - and it sprouted right over our house.

It was an ugly night.

But let me start at the beginning.

We knew a few days ago that the conditions were going to be right for bad stuff on Tuesday afternoon, evening and night.  The forecast kept changing and by Tuesday morning, it looked like we would probably not have the bad stuff but still could get thunderstorms, hail and wind with a much slighter chance of bad stuff.  We had a thunderstorm with hail midday.  Then the sun came out and that is actually bad, because warm air was not a good thing to have.

About 7:30 or so, it was a little rainy and it was windy but not bad.  About 9:00, it was obvious that we were probably going to get some storms out of the system that was rapidly moving in from the west.  There had been a few rotating areas, but the one spot that could possibly cause us concern was going to far north to bother us at home or Otter at her apartment although we expected that she could get a harder storm because the southern edge of the storm track was going to be pretty close to her.  Shortly before 10:00, I texted her with that information since I had the tv on and was watching it.

Almost immediately, we heard the worst sound possible:  the sirens going off.  We went to the laundry room (our safe spot) and I called Otter.  I told her to head down to their basement immediately.  She said the sirens in her area were not sounding but she got her shoes on, grabbed her purse and her radio, locked her door and started heading down.  She texted me as soon as she got downstairs and said that their sirens had started almost as soon as she had locked her door.

From then until 10:30, we texted back and forth with updates and the reports kept getting worse and worse.  The storm in her area was tracking north enough that it looked like her area would be safe.  She stayed in the basement with most of the other residents in her building until it was safely past them.  But by then, another "pop up" had happened and it was heading our direction.  It had produced at least one small tornado but it didn't stay.  However, the track was still coming towards us and we were waiting to run back to the laundry room if we needed to.  We weren't sure if we were going to get hit or not.  The wind was pretty strong at that point.  But it suddenly increased and it sounded odd - somewhat like the train sound associated with tornados but not exactly.  At that point, I commented to Bill that I did not like the sound of the wind and at that time the reporters started calling out street names and they were right where we live.  We hotfooted it back to the laundry room - and Maggie went right along with us.  We had taken her back every time we went to the laundry room, but animals frequently seem to sense things like that - maybe they hear them.  When she started heading to the laundry room pretty much ahead of us and on her own, we knew that something bad was happening.  The sound of the wind increased and it was very loud.  That was probably when it was sprouting.  It blew past us in a matter of a few minutes; it did actually develop into a tornado and it touched down probably less than a mile from our house.  I had been texting with Otter because she had heard the same reports we did and she knew we were in the firing line at that point.  When it passed us, I let her know that we were safe.  It was around 11:00 p.m. then.

Otter stayed in their basement for a while, there were a few dogs that were also their with their owners and they did what they always do - she's a magnet for them.  She was playing with a chihuahua that lives in the 1-bedroom that was originally her apartment before she and former roommate moved to the 2-bedroom unit.  Let's just say that she is very much my father's granddaughter!  She went back upstairs after a little while and let me know.

We were both exhausted by that point, but also Thankful.  It was after 11:30 before I managed to get to bed.  Bill was up for a couple more hours, he knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep.  I was awake until well after midnight.  It was so hard to get up at 6:15 this morning when my alarm went off.

Otter had her 3rd of 4 dental appointments today, otherwise I think I would have just turned the alarm off and gone back to sleep.

But we are safe and their were no injuries associated with any of the storms.  There were several small tornados, in Tulsa as well as assorted surrounding areas.