Apparently I ticked off Mother Nature with my post about a piece of land being affected by a tornado once every 2,220 years (see two posts below). A couple of homes only a half-a-mile to our NW had their occurrence happen just last night, in the Valencia addition at 178th and Penn. From what I have seen it looks like F1 damage.
It all started about 12:45 last night as I picked up the remote to turn off the TV for the night. It just happened that Gary England was on and he was noting a peculiar "configuration" at 150th and County Line Road. Soon the configuration turned into a full blown hook-echo that almost looked like the eye of a hurricane, and about the same time Val reported a brief tornado. The rotation continued to intensify as it headed pretty much in our direction, with such terms as "could tornado at anytime" and an occasional "WOW" being thrown out by storm chasers that are sitting a mile from our house. It really happened that fast. Going from ready to go to sleep to a possible tornado headed directly at you is a little unnerving. The "official" tornado warning came out a few minutes later, and Liz, myself, and Enid (not so happy in her cat carrier) found ourselves sitting in the bathtub.
I have never been that close to a tornado. I know so because the wind went from howling at 40 MPH out of the SE to dead calm in a couple of minutes. Looking back it is probably when the wind went dead calm that the tornado was only a couple of streets to our NW. It was eerie to say the least.
I never "endorse" watching a particular meteorologist. Until now. I've often joked about the acronym, but I have never seen as detailed of a radar as MOAR. When I get the images from last night I will post them here, they were incredible. If we had been watching the two other stations we would have turned off the TV and fallen asleep. They were five to ten minutes behind Gary in showing the rotation. And throughout the night, Gary interrupted programming the LEAST. When he was on air, it was for relevant updates. Just my "two cents."
By the way, expect another round of severe weather Thursday, possibly significant.
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2 comments:
Sorry you had the scare! And I 100% agree w/ your endorsement of Gary. I blogged about it when our "tornado" hit up here in January. These local yahoos aren't fit to lick Mr. England's boots. As you said, it's not the frequency of the interruptions but the quality of the update. I'll feel so much safer when I'm back in OK!
I'm glad Enid was safe! It will be interesting fitting three cats, a dog, a baby, and two adults in our bathtub.
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