Helen, It is good to hear that you are OK. So often, these afternoon/evening thunderstorm lines cross OK into AR and cause trouble. I'm glad y'all didn't get hit by any of them last night. Carol, I am watching live footage shot from a helicopter above Lone Grove and the destruction is stunning. If you look at the KXII website later, they may have it up in the video section. The ground is bare. No grass. No weeds. No shrubs. Many trees, especially Eastern Red Cedars remain standing. A lot of the taller, older deciduous trees lost tons of limbs, though, even if they are still standing. It looks like someone took a vacuum cleaner and sucked up all the plants out of the ground. All you see is brown soil for as far as you can see as the helicopter's camera pans the area. I think I saw the granddaughter on the Today Show. She was still emotionally devastated and perhaps a little in shock, speaking of how everything familiar is "just gone". DH just came in, exhausted after 8 hours of search-and-rescue in heavy firefighter bunker gear. He says the destruction is widespread. The trailer park he searched may be the one you're thinking of--it had about 60 trailers and every single one of them is gone. They did not locate any further survivors or victims there. DH is not an expert, but thinks it was most likely an F-3 and possibly an F-4. Time will tell. We did have good warning last night. KXII, the local CBS affiliate, had a storm spotted named Doug Drace on the ground in Lone Grove BEFORE the tornado hit, as it was making its way from Montague County, TX, across the Red River at the Tayovayas (sp?) Bridge at Leon/Courtney, over Courtney and Orr with a brief touchdown perhaps in Orr where two homes were destroyed. When the tornado was coming down to the ground, Doug Drace was telling us live...it is descending....it is on the ground....Lone Grove take cover now. He did a great job, and anyone listening knew it was serious and knew to seek shelter. Based on what we were hearing on TV and on the fire radios, I believe most people had 15-20 minutes advance warning to seek shelter. The NWS had issued watches and then warnings in advance of the tornado, the weather radios sounded, the fire and police pagers sounded, the media tracked it and publicized it. If you didn't know it was coming, you just weren't paying attention! The official death toll remains 8 with 14 seriously injured, and two of them airlifted to Parkland Memorial in Dallas. I believe the two that were airlifted were related to the elderly man who died in his home last night. I don't remember his name, but I have seen footage of his family members searching through the rubble of his home and they seem completely shellshocked and stunned. Now watching live press conference with Gov. Henry. Here's what they are saying: Path of tornado through Lone Grove about 4 to 5 miles long and at times up to a half-mile wide. Devastation is "just incredible, it takes your breath away" according to Gov. Henry. Gov. Henry says only 8 fatalities and only 2 are still on the "missing" list and no one knows if they have left the area or if they are truly missing. Gov. Henry asked that everyone pray for all those impacted as they have been through a devastating time. Carol, After seeing the aerial footage, all I can say is that you and your family have been blessed, truly, truly blessed. For you to have had that many family members survive this horrific weather event is truly amazing and a reminder of the Good Lord's grace. I know Lone Grove faces a long, slow recovery but the support and assistance are pouring in and I am sure this strong community will rebound and will rebuild and will take this opportunity to pull together, love one another and help one another. It is a beautiful, sunny afternoon here in southern OK and the clean-up has already begun. I am watching John, the furniture store owner on Fox News live from Lone Grove, and he's holding up very well, considering the devastating loss he has suffered. He's had a lot of volunteers (many of who he does not even know, they said) show up to help him salvage what he can. He is devastated, though, and I saw him wipe away a couple of tears as he spoke. My heart and prayers go out to him and to all affected persons. Dawn

Carol, I was thinking of you and your family and the Lone Grove tornado when I left the house for the tornado shelter because the first report of a tornadic circulation was at Petersboro in Montague County--virtually the same spot that the storm which produced the Lone Grove tornado also first appeared on radar before it crossed into western Love County and headed for Lone Grove. I followed the storms from the tornado shelter via the radar on my laptop (I lost reception, though, when I closed the steel door), a fire radio set on the Love County repeater station, and a weather radio. If the storm had followed the typical tornado pattern of moving from the southwest to the northeast, we would've been hit somewhere between Burneyville and Thackerville, and spotters in both areas did report tornadic circulation that never came down to the ground, thankfully. This storm, though, headed due east, hooked a little southeast once or twice, then corrected back to due east. We had two major cells move east from Montague County (baseball sized hail and a tornado touchdown) to Cooke County (rain, wind, hail, possible tornado) to Grayson County (golfball to baseball sized hail, tornado near the airport) to Fannin County. I am grateful they went east, and mostly through lightly populated areas. For a while we thought Gainesville was really going to get pounded. Robert, LOL I don't know. That would be an interesting thing to figure out. Maybe they described them in terms of inches? I wonder if there are a lot of historical reports of large hail? I can remember very large hail dating back to the late 1970s when I was in high school/college, but I don't remember any prior to that, although I am sure there was some. Dawn

Suzie, It is a sad story about the firefighter. They haven't released a lot of details, but I think he was involved in a fire truck burnover, which is when a wind-driven wildfire overtakes a firetruck and literally burns right over it/through it/around it. My husband and our Asst. Chief survived one of those a couple of years ago and it happened while I was watching. The only "good" thing about it was that the fire moved so fast that by the time it registered in my brain that fire had overtaken his truck, he'd driven out of the fire safely and the fire was running towards the interstate and he turned and 'chased' it from behind. I hope to never see anything like that again. The big fire west of Fort Worth is near Possum Kingdom Lake in very rough and rugged terrain. The last I heard, about 30 homes there had burned and over 200 more were at risk and had been evacuated. Possum Kingdom State Park had been closed, and some roads were closed. There's also a huge complex of fires in the Wichita Falls area that involves at least 3 separate very large, major wildfires. Homes have burned there and evacuations have occurred. Some Love County firefighters are in the county next to Wichita Falls helping fight a different fire complex near Henrietta, TX. Before today's fires, Texas had had about a half-million acres burn just in the last 7 or 8 days. There's no telling what that number will be after they total up all the acreage today. Our VFD only had two brief fire calls today so I consider us very fortuante indeed because it could have been so much worse. Our county's burn ban expires next week and I hope the commissioners renew it (though I don't think they will because burn bans are very unpopular with some of their constituents). Carol, Our mesonet station goes out every time the wind gusts over 20 mph. It is out even when no one else's stations are malfunctioning. It drives me up the wall. Our wind was like a ocean today....choppy and full of big waves interspersed with periods of calm. As sundown approached, it seemed to calm down a lot...then began gusting really hard again. It can't seem to make up its mind what to do. The little wildlife puddle in our driveway had little choppy whitecaps. The birds bathed in it anyway. There was a big wreck on I35 in Gainesville this afternoon caused by the wind blowing tractor-trailer trucks around. Gainesville's highest recorded gust was 53 and ours was 54. Our weather is very similar to theirs, so when the Burneyville mesonet station malfunctions, I just check the station at the Gainesville Airport. I'm watching the 10 p.m. newscast and Steve LaNore just said we'll have near-record lows here tonight. Oh good, just what we needed. Also, he said the wind returns Sunday, so I'll try to get a lot done tomorrow in case Sunday's weather is yucky. Dawn

Pam, In Oklahoma, our middle name is "bad weather". I think that tornadoes are my least favorite form of bad weather, although hail storms rank a close second. At least with hurricanes, y'all know it is coming and you even have a pretty reasonable idea a day or two beforehand where it will make landfall. You have wind speed estimations, elaborate storm surge maps and forecasts, etc. Up to a point, you know what to expect and about when to expect it. With tornadoes, it is their very speed and randomness, as well as their unpredictable nature, that makes them so scary. I think I could handle living in a hurricane-prone area better than living in a tornado-prone area. Much remains to be learned about tornadoes. I think the NWS does an outstanding job of telling us when the conditions exist for tornado development, but it must be our job to pay attention, heed the warnings, and be alert and aware and ready to seek shelter, because no one can predict the precise location where all those conditions will come together at any given moment and form a tornado---or a dozen tornadoes---or a hundred tornadoes. No one can predict if any specific tornado that forms will be a pretty mild EF-0 or a severely horrific Ef-4 or EF-5. No one can predict how long they will last, although the NWS does warn us of days when long-track tornadoes are more likely to occur. I am glad you and yours were safe when the tornado hit your village, and I know your husband and his chainsaw were greatly appreciated. Looking at the damage I'm guessing it likely was an F-2 or a very low-end F-3? It is wonderful y'all were able to help. A couple of years ago, a small community in the county adjacent to ours was hit by an F-4 tornado in February. It was the worst damage I've ever seen from a tornado because the county I live in doesn't have nearly as many tornadoes as other parts of Oklahoma, and when we have them, they tend to be small and fairly weak. Of course, we have only lived here 14 years, so maybe we just haven't lived here long enough to see a big one here. My DH was one of the dozens of emergency responders who spent the next 24 hours on search and rescue efforts, assisting the storm victims in any way possible. It warms my heart to see how many people respond and help, and every bit of that help is needed. Oklahoma City is hit by more tornadoes than any other city in the United States. Since records began being kept, there's been over 140 hit the OKC area, according to info on the NWS Norman Weather Office's website. The records date back to the late 1800s. We moved here in 1999, just a couple of months before the horrific 1999 tornadoes hit OKC-Moore and other communities. Prior to that, in our head, tornadoes hit people "out there" in tornado alley but I don't think my DH and I had thought they'd ever be a threat to us. After we saw the magnitude of the damage in the OKC area, which is a little over 100 miles north of us, we had a tornado shelter put in before spring of 2000 rolled around. Have we used it? Oh yes, several times a year. Have we had tornadoes near us? Yes, within our county and in the adjacent counties, but so far not any on the ground within maybe 20 miles of us. We've been lucky. Oklahoma weather drives us gardeners nearly crazy. It doesn't matter how beautiful your yard and landscape may be, how lush, beautiful and productive your veggie garden might be, or how heavily loaded with fruit, your fruit trees, brambles or berry plants might be---the OK weather can wipe it out in the blink of an eye. While tornadoes are a huge threat, we also often have very destructive severe thunderstorms, usuallly accompanied by high winds and often by hail in very large sizes that demolishes everything. We have derecho winds that blow through and flatten plants to the ground. We don't often have a lot of snow storms that cause damage, but very destructive ice storms are fairly common. I'd take a heavy snow storm over a light ice storm any day of the week, but we don't get to chose which one we get. Rain often comes in two forms here--either almost none at all for long periods of time, or inches and inches at once, often resulting in flash flooding. Gardening in Oklahoma is not for sissies! Earthquakes have always occurred in Oklahoma, but many of them are too small to be felt. We had a big one (big for us, but I bet folks from California would laugh at us because it was not big at all compared to theirs) last year that was felt as far away as Dallas. It was the first one I ever had felt here. Then, a couple of weeks later, I felt another one. Once was enough for me, and twice was too many. I'll be alright if I never feel the ground shake like that again. Bon, I don't know how many earthquakes Oklahoma normally has in one year, but over 1,000 were recorded in 2010. Of those, only 103 were reported as being "felt" by humans. The rest were just recorded seismically. I haven't seen 2011's numbers. I've linked a webpage with lots of OK earthquake data on it, including recent earthquakes. I cannot help thinking that the fracking procedures being used with oil/gas wells are contributing to our more frequently-felt earthquakes. Down in the D-FW metro area where fracking has gone on at a tremendous rate for about 10 years or so, they are having fairly frequent small quakes. I grew up there and never heard of an earthquake there, not even one from long ago, until they started fracking the wells. The weather here is supposed to be just absolutely gorgeous this week, and I am looking forward to accomplishing much in the yard and garden, but we never, ever can let our guard down. You cannot be a gardener in Oklahoma without being weather-aware and, in fact, every resident of Oklahoma needs to be very aware of the weather around them at all times, not just the gardeners. It isn't that we have more weather than anyone else, but I think it changes incredibly rapidly here and it can turn violent in so many ways...and does so with great regularity. It keeps life interesting anyway. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Recent Earthquakes in Oklahoma