I was finally able to talk to my BIL yesterday and he said the metal from the shed of the house next to him was hanging on his backyard fence. The lumberyard to his south lost a roof. The path was mostly JUST west of him, then crossed his road just north of him. As I think about it, it seems almost impossible that their home wasn't damaged. Of course, other members of his family were not so lucky, but all of their damage is property damage and only one minor injury.

Now for the worst part.....my sister and BIL had heard that it might hail. They have carports, but I guess they were still concerned and decided to drive over to their son's carport which was a little more shelter to protect their pickup from the hail. The house is across the street and slightly to the NORTH. They rode out the storm in a pickup under a carport. Now how dumb/lucky is that???? They didn't know about the tornado warning. When I mentioned weather radio, he didn't know what I was talking about. I think I will be taking him a weather radio. LOL

From what I have been able to learn South Meridian was hit mostly on the north end which would explain the large home and the post Office. I think most of the damage (trailer park) is going to be west of Meridian. I may be wrong, but that is what I have heard from several sources now.

I was in Picher shortly after the tornado last year. I was in Moore and OKC after their tornado and shortly after a really bad one that hit the Wichita Falls area many years ago. I saw a big one just after it hit in Arkansas. As a child I saw several that pulled up big trees, or lifted roofs off houses and sat them down somewhere else like you might with a building block house. Nothing that I have seen compares to Moore. It just left sticks and bricks. In some areas you couldn't even tell that it was a board, it was just lots of big splinters. I wish I never had to see another one.

I will be going down in a day or two to see my family, but since part of them are sick, I am trying to let the "flu bug" pass before I go. Thanks for the update.

Carol, I believe you are right about the majority of the damage being west of Meridian. If I remember the streets correctly, we went a block or two past Meridian and the drove south on a road I don't remember. When we got to Evergreen, we turned back east. It was on Evergreen that you really saw storm damage to the north of Meridian. On the south side of Evergreen, there was damage in pastures, but that sort of damage isn't as obvious as wrecked homes.

When you drove towards Meridian on Evergreen, you passed the remains of the home (north of Evergreen and west of Meridian) where the elderly man died and his son suffered injuries that would take his life a day or so later. As we got close to Meridian, the damage was staggering. Turning from Evergreen north onto Meridian, we observed damage on both side of the street. The trailer park was on the east side of the road and it had the most damage, but houses that were on Meridian, but on the west side of the road, had spotty damage. It was like the storm hit Meridian and traveled almost, but not quite, straight up Meridian. However, it was going somewhat east of the road and as you traveled further north on Meridian, the damage was going more and more to the east of the road. I don't know if I said that well, but we first saw major damage west of Meridian on Evergreen, then on the west side of Meridian road, then on the east side of Meridian road, and then further and further east as you drove north towards Hwy 70.

If a storm ever hits and I am under a carport, I hope I have that same "dumb luck". LOL

EVERYONE should have a weather radio--we have three, plus our fire/police radios, and 2 out of 3 of the fire radios have the NWS channel. Tell your BIL that they also can sign up for weather alerts from KXII at the KXII website and the station will send weather alerts to their computers or cell phones.

I remember the Wichita Falls tornado well. My older brother was a college student there at the time. While I do remember the massive damage quite well and, also the lives lost, what I remember most was that, when we went to WF for his college graduation 13 months after the tornado, there still was so much damage that hadn't been fixed or cleaned up. There were buildings with tarped roofs, the street lights and traffic signals all were not repaired or replaced, and rusting hulks of cars still set on right-of-way or in medians. At the time, I couldn't imagine why they hadn't cleaned up more, but now I understand it--the feds didn't help pay for clean-up back then as much as they do now, and I am sure WF was doing the best they could with the resources they had. Because the street lights had not been repaired, it was SO DARK there at night. I don't know how people drove on the pitch-black streets without having accidents constantly. After the afternoon graduation ceremony ended, my brother urged us to leave for home quickly so we could get out of WF before darkness fell.

Once, when we were on vacation in south Texas, we drove past the remains of a small town, once known as Saragosa, that ceased to exist after it was wiped out by a massive multiple-vortex F-4 tornado. I think we drove through the remains of the town in the early 1990s and the tornado had hit in 1987. That tornado wiped out 85% of the town's buildings, killed 35 people and injured 121. The town only had a population of about 185 but there were extra people in town for a graduation ceremony in the community center. That community center was hit and hit hard and quite a few fatalities occurred to people inside it when it collapsed. Saragosa was a very improverished, mostly Hispanic community and almost every family opted to move away and start over someplace else. Because most of the town's inhabitants spoke ony Spanish, and warnings were issued only in English, very few people even knew there was a tornado bearing down on the town. When we drove through the town, all we saw was the remains of 1 house and a lot of concrete slabs. It was eerie.

Dawn

My husband and I always remember the Wichita Falls storm because of all of the farm equipment we saw.....big combines so smashed you could have fit them in a small pickup.

I am not a storm chaser but I have seen more than my share of funnel clouds. My son and I almost drove into one in Colorado. We couldn't figure out why all of these stores were closed in these little towns in the middle of the afternoon. We soon found out when we couldn't see to drive down the road.

My husband and I were driving in the country in Arkansas and I told him to look at the funnels in front of us. He knows I have this thing about nuclear reactors so he thought that was what I was looking at and trying to convince him it was a tornado. He finally looked in the right place and saw these twin funnels from sky to ground. We were between two rice fields and no where to go. We just kept driving and when we hit this little town the sirens were blowing and people were scurrying around to find shelter. We had no where to go. The tornado missed them that day, but two weeks later wiped out half of the town.

Of course, we saw Galveston at Christmas and it is still a mess after that hurricane although it was months later. Mother Nature can be a mean momma.