Yes, I'm a native Kansan, but from the SE corner. My heart and prayers to out to them as well. They are still looking for people in the aftermath.

We never experienced a tornado in SE Kansas, and the myth was that because it was situated between two rivers (the Fall River and the Verdigris River), a tornado would just skip over that area. I don't know if there is any truth to that, but I do know that there has never been a tornado there to this day. There was recently one in Pittsburg, Kanas, not too far away (we are from Independence, Kansas, and Neodesha, Kansas area), but I think there was little damage.

Susan

Susan,

I thought about you as I was writing that post and for the life of me I couldn't remember which part of the state you were from.

They used to always say that Fort Worth was protected by the various forks of the Trinity River, and in the 40 years I lived there we only had 1 tornado come anywhere close to there. Since we moved here, my brother's house, which is less than 2 miles from where we once lived, has had 2 tornados come right over it and then touch down a half-mile to a mile away. And, of course, Fort Worth has had a couple of major tornadoes the last few years and several minor ones as well. I guess we moved away from Fort Worth at the right time!

I surely do feel bad for the folks in Kansas. The damage I have seen on TV is just overwhelming. How in the world do you rebuild an entire town that was virtually wiped off the map?

I'm thankful most of Oklahoma has been spared from the fury of the tornadoes so far this year.

Dawn

The common belief the tornados won't cross major rivers is not true. I heard one of the local weathermen (Gary England?) discuss this in 1999 when the May 3 tornado marched from south of Chicasha to OKC, crossing the Washita, South and North Canadian Rivers. There are some scientific facts to support the idea that severe storms are affected by the heat generated by concrete in cities, but there are also exceptions, such as when downtown Nashville got hit. I guess the most important attribute of tornados is that they are unpredictable, generally. At least now we usually have good information about the severity of storms as they move across the land. When I was growing up if it thundered in the evening, we slept in in the basement that night! Keep a "weather eye" out!! Carolyn

I guess OK was not so lucky last night. I was watching footage of a tornado hitting the Sweetwater school. There was also footage of one crossing I-40 in western OK. The cars were not stopping for it and the storm spotter said one car of women was lucky to be alive today. Geez, were they not paying attention? How do you not see a tornado coming at you?

It was mentioned that there were 50 tornadoes in the plains states yesterday. There have already been tornado watches posted this morning....here we go again.

Lynn

Yes when I last looked at NWS website all to the west and north of us are in tornado watch areas. It ends just before Carter County.
This weather is unbelievable this year. We are supposed to live the "Sunny Side of the Arbuckles" down here...so WHERE is the sun? lol. And it looks like we may not see any for days and days to a week as far as the forecast was looking. I might as well go pull my tomatoes and other sun loving plants up and forget it. I hear them all crying...."Sun! Sun! we need sun!"
But thank God there have so far been no serious tornadoes for sure! Amen on that!
G.M.

OkieGardener, The weather guys in Fort Worth used to say that the rivers did not give extra tornado protection too, but a lot of people didn't believe them. Once Fort Worth had a couple of tornadoes run through the middle of town, all that mumbo-jumbo about the rivers stopped, though. Fort Worth and the entire D-FW metro area are having a really rough weather year this year too.

And I do appreciate our improved forecasting methods, but wonder if it doesn't sometimes lull us all into a false sense of security? After all, a tornado can form in an instant and strike anywhere before the NWS can even issue a warning. I really do keep my eyes on the skies!

Lynn, It does seem impossible to believe that anyone could be oblivious to the skies around them, doesn't it? I haven't seen the news today, so didn't know about last night's storms in Oklahoma.

If it is May in Oklahoma, it is tornado watch and warning season, isn't it?

I think we have gotten by light the last couple of springs because it was so dry and there wasn't much moisture. This spring is a whole different story though.

G.M., We had a few minutes of sun earlier. On a day like today, though, I think the more sun we have, the more daytime heating that occurs, and the more volatile the weather becomes. So, I guess today we are all better off with less sun and less heat. :(

I don't know if we are on the sunny side of the Arbuckles any more. I'm thinking maybe the sunny side moved somewhere else! I do think we have fewer tornadoes down here than the rest of Oklahoma has, though.

I hope everyone stays safe today.

Dawn

Me, too. I knew that was a "myth" Okiegardner. Most things about devastation are.

I heard about the two women who practically drove right into the tornado. I don't know how one would miss it, but they may have not know what to do either, being on the Interstate at the time.

I saw one tornado when I lived in Edmond. It was around 1986-87 - do you guys recall that one that came across the southwest part of Edmond? We were driving west on 15th Street, and I looked to the southwest and said to my then husband, "...that looks like a tornado"! He turned the car around and we stopped at a strip mall with a restaurant we frequented and the manager hustled us all into his walk-in deep freezer. It was rather frightening. But, the tornado veered east and didn't hit close to where we were. It did hit the neighborhood we lived in, but missed our house, thank goodness. That was awful, trying to get home that night.

Everyone please be careful and watch the weather closely! My neighbors have a basement we can go to.

Susan

Speaking of travel during bad weather and tornados...one year 2000 to 2002, I'm not sure of the exact year, DH and I were traveling home from Michigan through Indianna and it was a rainy stormy day. We were saved from driving into a tornado on an interstate overpass by our windshied wiper blade suddenly coming off! lol.

My DH does NOT stop in rain...he worries more about getting rear ended if he pulls over in severe rain so he just keeps going.

That day when the wiper blade came off he pulled over and just as he did we noticed all the cars suddenly pulling over and stopping up ahead of us. Just then severe wind, hail and rain just dumped out of the sky onto us...the wind was so strong I felt it would blow the car off the overpass. It was very loud but for some reason we never even thought of a tornado.
I recall looking out my window and wondering if the hail would damage the car we had only had a couple of months at that time, but also was wondering just how bad this thing would get. The car was rocking and shaking like mad and the noise was unreal. It was pretty frightening.

When it calmed down and we drove on into the town, we wanted to find a hotel for the evening and forget any more travel. There happened to be a convention in town and everything was booked but the man at the desk asked DH where we had just come from. When DH told him he said "how did you miss the tornado that just passed over that overpass and wiped out a large apartment complex?"

We had a definite sense of having been spared....we think that thing could have passed right in front of us and came down on the other side of the over pass...where it hit the apartments. Later that night when we FINALLY found a room, after at least two hours of driving through torrential rains and seeing what looked like funnel clouds trying to form, when we watched it on TV the tornado hit just about where we had been. But we never saw it at all! I suppose it was so rain-wrapped we couldn't see it...but I wondered if those cars which all pulled over ahead of us had seen something. We will never know. But we were very thankful that the clip somehow suddenly came off that wiper blade none the less.

They are not always easily seen. We have learned more about storms since then and it pays to be aware of weather conditions when you are traveling.
And pray A LOT when it is stormy! Definitely pray!
G.M.

G.M.,

What a tornado tale! Y'all were so blessed to come through that storm in good shape, weren't you?

We are probably OVERLY aware of storms at our house, but with a DH who is a police officer and a son who is a firefighter/EMT, that is just how it always will be. The two words I hear from BOTH of them more than anything else no matter what I am doing: "Be Careful". I guess it is just pounded into their brains in all the training they receive. Needless to say, whenever there is ANY sort of emergency or crisis in our part of the county, they are right in the middle of it.

Thunder, thunder, thunder overhead, but the skies aren't that dark, and no rain, so think it is headed over Love County and straight for you in Carter County.

Dawn

I have been watching the radar, G.M., and think tonight's storm is going to skirt just east of y'all too. It looks like Kingston and Durant are in the line of fire. Lots and lots of lightning and thunder but it appears to be headed straight towards Durant.

Dawn

Well I think all this rain has been washing all of the California off of me and exposing my Nebraska roots. I actually watched the radar last night and knew what all the colors meant, and could track the storm well enough that I felt safe enough to go back to bed.

Boy it feels good to be a mid-westerner again :)))

Although personally, I'd take an earthquake over a tornado any day of the week! Weathermen don't get to spend 8 hours hyping up an earthquake and getting prople scared of what's to come. The earthquake happens, and you call all your friends to see if they felt it, then you go back to what you were doing.

Bizydiggin-Oh but don't despair...you have not left earthquakes behind when you came to OK...just in the past few years we have had several. We had one which knocked foundations off and made people think an explosion had occurred in their neighborhood. Then several others followed.
Having never experienced earthquakes they are more eery and unsettling to me...I can see the clouds and know something is coming to hide or prepare...there is no radar to warn of earthquakes....lol
Guess it is just in what you are used to dealing with. I have had others from CA to say the same thing you say.

Dawn--We stayed okay all the rest of the day after that flood we got yestderday close to noon. How did you all do through the night?

I am hearing thunder like crazy so someone is getting it this morning. The radar shows Lawton area to be getting drenched. This thunder I hear is coming from the west..it must not be far away. I just went out and looked and we have clouds moving from the NE of us and heading SW...hope the storms which sat over northeastern OK the last couple of days are not backing up and heading down here.

How are all the rest of you guys doing? Still getting flooding rains?

Randy how is your back property doing now? Did you get more rain yesterday?

Well it looks like for yet another day we will all keep our eyes to the skies....hahaha. I have been a weather watcher for years but I am doing more of it this year than for a number of years all put together.

Come on SUNSHINE!

Ya'll have a safe day.
Endure...it will get better.......won't it? hahaha

G.M.

G.M.

We came through the night just fine, although we had thunder and lighning on and off all night.

I am watching the skies, too, and hoping it all misses us today!

Courtney,

Welcome back to the Midwest. :) We usually don't feel the earthquakes here that G.M. gets just 30 or 35 miles north of us, but they have been happening a lot the last year or two.
Oklahoma weather contains a little bit of everything, so it is hardly ever boring, at least!

I hope all of you are safe today. On my way out to brunch with DH and DS.

Later!

Dawn

I grew up in Carter County, went to college in Durant, then moved away for many years. We had moved back to Carter County after my husband retired from the Air Force and had been living there several years when we took a vacation to Texas and Mexico. We stopped in a Texas park which gave classes on the terrain of Texas and pointed out the hill county, etc. In this class they told us that part of that terrain was a result of a fault line that started just nort of Ardmore OK in the Arbuckle Mountains. We just stood there with our mouth open. I had lived there all of those years and had never been told about the fault line. We felt several small earthquakes during the years we lived there. Of course, they were not new to us since we had felt them in Greece, Alaska, etc. We decided that the fault line must be the best kept secret in southern Oklahoma.

So far today we are only having a few sprinkles. Hope it doesn't rain again today. Much of the area where I live sits on a rocky ledge. At about 3-4 feet in my yard you hit solid limestone, so there is nowhere for the ground water to go until it has time to drain into the lake (except to your lateral lines, and all of those places you don't want it). Like many of you, we have had plenty for awhile.

We knew about the fault line when we moved here, but didn't think much about it.

I hope your land gets a chance to drain. No new rain here, so lots of folks are out mowing their still-wet grass. Some of the ranchers are doing the first cutting of their hayfields, but I don't know how it will dry enough to bale.

Southcentral Oklahoma is under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until midnight tonight, but nothing has fallen, it seems relatively calm, and we have had some sunlight. Yippee!

Soonergrandma--I have known about that fault line for years as well. Never thought too much about it until one year back in the late '80's some guy was predicting that there would be an earthquake with would seperate the U.S. starting at the edge of OK....hahaha. Thank God that never happened.
The little earthquakes have been going on for years apparently but they are small and infrequent. I read that back somewhere in the 1800's there was a pretty large one...but I can't now remember all the details....too many other things to worry about.....lol.

Well Dawn it looks like it is pretty much all to our west tonight. I have been listening to the weather men on channel 4. I am so glad we never got any rain today. And the sun.....oh it was so wonderful to see it again!

I had to chuckle when Mike Morgan said "all this water is Oklahoma's over compensation to the drought we had last summer".
That's our OK alright....extremes....always some kind of extreme.....lol.
You gotta love it anyway.

Some of the footage they showed made it look like OKC was really a mess....what a shame.

Everyone stay safe tonight.
G.M.

You, too, G.M. I think we are okay for now. But, we sure have a lot of water, and lots of flooding this morning. I still can't believe all the people who drive into the flooded areas where you cannot see the curbs, and the water is actually moving! Duh! I drive a little bitty Mazda, and I would just be floating down the street waving at folks like I was in a parade or something!

My backyard cannot take too much more water, or my front lawn between the sidewalk and street. It is so wet, that the new beds I created are literally under water.

A lot of plants are starting to have breakage in the water-soaked stems and limbs. They will grow back when it dries out a bit, but for now, they will have to start all over again. I hope I don't lose my sulphur babies on the wild senna. That plant has one stem remaining on it, since the others all broke off. You know, they always did tell us, when I was participating in begonia shows, not to water a plant before moving it to the show because the stems would be more likely to break off. Dry stems are more flexible.

Susan

G.M.,

I think we are fortunate down here compared to people east, west and north of us. It is going to be a good day to garden today, I think. It seems like rain only comes in two varieties around here....too much or too little.

Susan,

I hope y'all get a chance to dry out soon. A lot of the rain lately goes around us and heads straight for OKC. All my life I have heard that drought years are always followed by flooding years, and this year seems to prove that point!

I hope your senna survives. Is there an alternate host plant nearby for the sulphurs in case it doesn't?

Dawn

Dawn I totally agree that we have been very blessed as to our weather compared to so many. In spite of the ice storms, drought and floods we have not had it as bad as so many have. So I just feel blessed and thankful.

I do get pretty crabby if I have go too long without sunshine and warmth. Perhaps it has to do with being an August baby? lol lol

Enjoy the day outdoors...I plan to get my "mud" shoes on soon and wade on out there myself.

Susan I have been seeing quite a few smallish pale yellow butterflies....are they all sulphurs?
Also I looked through the site you sent the link to in your post on the moths....it is a great site and answered some questions I had concerning birds. I love cardinals and have finally been having a pair in yard the last several days. I put out a feeder with sunflower seeds yesterday. I would love to "keep" them here. That same site had a good amount of bird info. Thanks!

Oh and I have one lone dove in my yard on and off lately. Not a pair.....just one.

I have also seen some Red Admirals also. Your site provided the pictures to identify them. I thought they were painted ladies until i saw the pics.

gotta get outside.....ya'll have a good day.
G.M.