Hope your family is ok - we must be getting just the outriding storms up here. We had severe thunder storms and a tornado watch, but my area has only had intermittent rains, not even enough to bother the newly planted vegetable starts. All of the rain is making it hard to continue getting things planted, but compared to what you all are dealing with I shouldn't complain.

I hope your nephew and family are fine. And that the next round of tornadoes isn't as bad for anyone. Living in MS tornadoes have always been terrifying to me. Stay safe.
Oh, no video link.

Oh man, I wondered About you and yours. Oklahoma is really catching it this year. Hope the nephew is okay. Stay safe, annie.
kay

Glad you are ok and hope your family is also. # 1 granddaughter said the one in Edmond was 1 mile from their house. Grandson-in-law posted that he had lived in OK 28 years and had never seen one. I posted that he should keep it that way.
BTW he is 28 years old, which is the ref.to 28 years.

((((hug))))s

I forgot to add the link for you last night. I added a new and better LINK than I had planned to post last night . It's at the bottom of my original post above. Hope you will watch it and listen.

Even though we were only at the edge of it, it twisted plant tops and broke out the tops of some trees - one, and only one of my hollyhocks got tied into crazy looking knots. Seriously. Bizarre.
No damage that I can see or complain about. It skipped us again!

Still waiting to hear from other relatives and friends around the state. My other nephew lives in the country on the southwest side of Cushing. Haven't heard from him yet. He lives in one of those damnable mobile homes on prairie farmland. They need to outlaw those things!!!

The same tornado zigzagged around my town (like they always do) and went up hwy 18 through the town of Agra, and then crossed the hwy and continued northeast toward Cushing. DN "Boy" would be in the area where it likely crossed 18 hwy on the southwest side of Cushing.

These things follow pretty predictable trails across the state. Unfortunately, they built the major highways following the old cattle trails, and those were where tornadoes had crossed the prairies for decades, maybe centuries, clearing out wide swaths of trees. New town sites were often chosen along those same routes for the same reason - places that were already cleared of trees! How handy! Why didn't the early white settlers and later the highway planners ever wonder why those areas were cleared like that and why the Native Americans hadn't chosen those sites for their communities? Hello! Time out! Change of plans! Like...a major DUH!

Well, the weather radio just went off. We are under a new Tornado Watch. The sky is getting that strange "greenhouse" effect. That is a good indicator of coming tornadoes - the lighting turns a chartreuse green like it is in a big greenhouse. Weird.

Talk to ya'll later.
~Annie

Kathy,
When the reports were coming on the TV about the tornado moving through Edmond, I was thinking about your granddaughter and hoping she was okay. I knew it was close to where she lives. Yikes!

When tornadoes are a mile wide, living one mile from where one has reportedly touched down, is RIGHT THERE! I mean, seriously!

That same one came across about 3 miles south of Tryon, heading NE, and since it was a mile wide, that made it within spitting distance.

They are just too unpredictable. When they wobble and change directions like they often do, one or two miles is not far enough!!!!
Like a spinning Jack, they wobble and go this way and that in an unpredictable rotation. And when they get rain-wrapped, or when it is in the dark of night, you cannot see them whatsoever!

Do not take chances! Have a plan and have everyone prepare their own backpack of necessities - clothes, jackets, sturdy shoes, flashlights, candles, matches or lighters, bottles of water, paper towels, and TP. A medical kit is a good idea too. I always take an axe with me to the basement in case I need to chop my way out. Charge your cell phones. Have chairs and blankets and pillows in place where you are going to go if possible.

Closets and bathrooms are no longer recommended as safe places. Modern homes are no longer built as sturdy as the old homes once were. New, lightweight building materials and brick-veneer homes cannot withstand winds up to 300 MPH. That is why you see the old homes still standing after many decades, but new homes get blown to splinters and rubble. (Glad I live in this crappy old brick house built in 1929-30) . It has a massive wood timber frame, not 2X4s, and solid brick structure with plastered interior walls, not brick-veneer over a wood frame house. (Knock on wood...it is still standing anyway!)

In addition to that swell little tidbit of Architecture & Construction information, be aware that tornadoes have become so powerful now that modern closets and bathrooms will no longer protect you. Plan ahead when storms are forecast and way before tornadic storms are imminent. Get below ground!

Stay safe by staying informed!
~Annie

I hadn't been watching any news so had no idea about the tornadoes. I hope everyone is OK. I can't imagine how stressful it must be not knowing what turns the twister will take.
Take care everyone.

Tornado on the ground RIGHT NOW! It is huge!
It has a debris ball around it that is over 2 miles wide!
That debris is trees, vehicles, homes, businesses, people, animals...OMG!
It was going northeast...now it has changed shape and direction and heading southeast. It just "roped out" - changed from a wide wedge shape into a spindle form like a twisting rope. Now it collapsed and is gone. That fast! But now it appears to be trying to re-group, re-energize and recycle into another tornado.
My satellite TV keeps going off and on.
Uh, oh! Tornado warning now in my county now - Watch number 191 southwest of here. Gotta go.
Wish us luck!

Dear Annie:
I hope you are OK. After living through one tornado I hope I NEVER ever have to see another.
My thoughts are with Oklahoma today.

Annie, we're watching the news and worried. Are you OK?
Hope everyone else out there is safe.
You're all in our thoughts.

Annie,

to borrow from thyme2dig: Hope everyone else out there is safe.
You're all in our thoughts.

OMG, what devastation, Annie I hope you and yours are safe, my heart goes out to those who have lost so much.

Annette

Good grief! What devastation. Praying for you and yours. Let us know you are safe.
kay

Oh my goodness -- what can we do other than pray and make a donation to one of the charities that is helping.

Heard the news and thought of you, and had to check. I hope you and your family are safe!

Heard the news and thought of you, and had to check. I hope you and your family are safe!

We are okay.

The tornado has been determined to have been an F-5 (or EF-4)
It hit in Moore, Okla, southwest of here about 90 minutes away. Two elementary schools were flattened! OMG it is horrible!
All the kids in one school walked out of that pile of splintered rubble alive. Unbelievable.

The kids in the other school were not so fortunate. Seven were found drowned in the basement where they were taken for shelter. There are still some 35 little children that they have not found yet. Some were in the hallway hugging the inside wall. The rescuers have been working furiously trying to dig them out. Some have been found alive, surprisingly, but many are feared to be dead, heavy concrete walls piled on top of them. They are K-5 through 3rd grade ages - just wee ones.

One man came out of his storm shelter and found someone's baby laying in his front yard. He has no idea who it belonged to. My God.

There was a horse farm near there where people kept their race horses. There were some 75-100 horses kept there and stabled in 6 large stalls. Most of the horses were killed by the tornado debris and those that survived were severely injured and had to be put down....all but one.

The Moore Hospital was totally destroyed. Dozens of cars, suburbans, RVs, and trucks were thrown up against the emergency entrance and piled as high as the three-story building. Never seen anything like that! I am happy to tell you that no one there was injured or killed. The staff had moved everyone to a safe location north in OKC. They were paying attention to the weather alerts.

Most of the 30 mile swath of destruction is just ground up rubble of what was once homes and businesses. The only things left are the streets and driveways. Even the trees and grass are gone in the worst hit areas. Some of the ponds even had their water sucked completely out of them.

It is totally unreal and so sad. The families who have lost their homes are just walking the streets, dazed and confused. They are now homeless with no place to go. Nothing left. You can see hundreds of people walking the streets, with glazed over eyes...going nowhere in particular, just moving around. There is a steady procession of people walking northward toward OKC many, many miles northward. They remind me of war refugees. Lost and in shock, they walk around dragging what they could find of their possessions in the rubble, dazed and confused. They have lost all they had.

Debris from these homes and businesses are now falling out of the sky all the way up into Missouri and over in northern Arkansas, littering trees and the ground.

There is still more rain and thunderstorms to come later this week and weekend, but no tornadoes at least at this point, but possibly there could be flooding.
~Annie

How very, very sad for everyone, but the poor little children break my heart. I am glad that you are ok.

What a tragedy.

Annie, glad to hear you are OK. Like Renee said, what a tragedy. Mother Nature has just been fierce. Those poor people who lost everything, but even worse, loved ones and children, my God.

Please let us know if you find out where we may be able to send needed relief items. Sometimes there is not a lot that can be done readily when there is such utter devastation. Sometimes churches take in items, but I would imagine there aren't necessarily many churches still standing.

Thank you for the update. We are so glad you are OK.

This is a tragedy that is almost beyond belief. So much devastation. Here in our state where the Tuscaloosa Tornado hit two years ago sites have been set up to collect for the victims.

The loss of the little ones is heartbreaking.

So glad you are safe, Annie.
kay

Glad to hear you are safe. The damage is just horrific - it sounds so much worse than Joplin.

The news reports are so mixed up.
They say one thing and then++ the next.
The death toll is this and then it is that.
They told us it was 21 dead. Then they said the new total was 51 and then they told us it was 91. Then went back to reporting that it was actually just 51 that some of the bodies had not been certified yet.
They said ALL the kids in Briarwood school got out safely and then today they reported that one child lost his life
They told us that there were 30+ kids missing in the other elementary, and it turns out that was not the case either.
This morning, they told us it was REALLY just 21 dead - only 9 were children. Seven were the ones who died in the school basement from drowning. The other two died at home or elsewhere.
It appears that all the rest of the children got out safely. Their teachers kept them safe.
They claimed that the mix up was due to the problem with cell phones because some of the cell towers were destroyed.

I have decided that the real problem was that someone has Dyslexia. When they saw the "21 dead" in a text they received on their cell phone, they saw the "2" backwards, so it looked like "51 dead". I bet that is what really happened but no one is fessing up to it.

They are now reporting that there were some killed in OKC as well. I will hold off on giving you any more details and so-called "facts"

Remains to be said, however, that it was a horrific tornado (an EF 4 or F5, depending up which scale you choose to use for gauging it), but all the structural damage is actual and real.

I hope all the other reports I relayed to you are factual.
Thanks.

We are getting smacked with a severe thunderstorm and flooding is a real possibility. We will have two days of sunshine and no rain, and then more thunderstorms and rain, rain, rain starting Friday and who knows when this is going to end.

I spent the day just listening to the local reports on TV while cleaning off my computer desk. I haven't done that in a very long while. Well...my goodness! I had forgotten just what a huge desk it is!!! Very NICE! I actually accomplished something of real value today that also made me feel happier!!!

My Horoscope for today states the following::
"It's all well and good to talk about your philosophies and share ideas with others, but today all of this intellectual talking and thinking might just be holding you back from actually getting any real work done. You might think that daily errands and the other humdrum tasks of daily life might not hold a great deal of intriguing or exciting opportunities, but you would be wrong if you did so. All the stimulation your mind needs is written right on your 'to do' list."

By golly! My reading was RIGHT ON!
(Ha Ha Ha)