After seeing this and all the coverage about Moore while still in Colo. A shelter was one of the first things we had put in when we bought our hom here in Grove. Hope we never have to use it!
Thanks for posting this

That u tube made me cry. I was in that thing but not in the worst of it. I was watching that TV weather anchor and heard the panic of the female news anchor. That is when we got in the hall. There were lights and sirens all night and tree branches and pieces of metal in the yard and street. Pet dogs were loose but people couldn't drive fast because of the trash in the street. We couldn't believe the man who said St. John's hospital was gone. Friends who lost their house carried an angry wet house cat around for hours. What strikes me about the video is there used to be trees. Between the ice storm and tornado there are far fewer trees in Joplin.

Carol, Thanks for the link. It is so horrifying to watch it, but that is why we all should watch it---to remind us to always keep an eye on the weather and to seek appropriate shelter when threatening weather is approaching us.

I think that anything that is weather-related is indeed related to gardening. Does anything in Oklahoma (and the surrounding region) cause us more garden problems than the weather and the climate here? Gardening here would be a piece of cake if the weather wasn't constantly wrecking gardens, and lives.

Sorie, We moved here just a few weeks before the 1999 tornadoes that hit OKC and Moore. We did not have a tornado shelter built when the house was built, but it was on our list of "one of these days" projects, though I cannot say it was the number one priority on that list. After we saw the incredible damage from the 1999 storms, we decided we'd have a tornado shelter installed before the next spring, and we did.

I didn't think we'd ever use it, but wanted to have it "just in case" we ever needed. We have used it a lot more than I thought we would. I go to it whenever we have a Tornado Warning for our county, and sometimes go to it when there is a warning for the Texas counties across the river from us, since tornadoes do not respect artificial man-designated boundaries. Most of the storms that have done tornadic or severe storm damage in our county have come at us from the south/southwest so I watch that weather as closely as I watch our own.

Helen, I will never, ever forget the damage caused by the Joplin tornado. I was watching on both TV and on radar on the internet as the storm approached your corner of the state and was so desperately hoping the storm would veer off or turn away from the city and it just became so apparent it would not. It was horrifying. I cannot even imagine what it was like to be there then, listening to local broadcasts in real-time, or to see the damage afterwards. The scars these storms leave on the land, especially via the loss of so many trees, can take decades to heal.

For so much of my life, my brain was filled with images of tornadoes that made the news back then.....the Lubbock, TX, and Wichita Falls, TX, tornadoes of the 1970s and the later Jarrell, TX, tornado of 1997. In the relatively few years we have lived here in Oklahoma, those images have been replaced by newer images of incredible damage done by tornadoes to places like OKC and its suburbs, especially Moore, but also Tuscaloosa, Joplin, and even Lone Grove, OK, a couple dozen miles from us, that was hit by an EF-4 a few Februaries back. I'll never forget what these storms did to the communities they hit.

More importantly, though, than the damage done, is the lessons we learn from people fighting to restore their lives and communities to normalcy. It would be easy to pack up and move away, but most people don't. Most of them stay and engage in the mighty battle to rebuilt their homes, their lives and their community. I am inspired by the strength people show when Mother Nature has dealt their area a devastating blow.

Maybe 2014 will be a year with relatively low tornadic activity, but then.....it only takes one.

Dawn

A friend of mine and I left my house on Wednesday for a bike ride. Because of the strong south wind, we decided to ride to Moore, where he had some business to take care of anyway.

I had not been there, since the tornado. It is so sobering to see the devastation. Here are pictures of the temporary hospital and the 7-Eleven where the young mother and her infant son along with others died while seeking shelter in the walk in fridge.

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