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

She's at the Festival of the Arts in downtown OKC right now, which is almost guaranteed to bring storms, lol. As much as she's hoping for them, we're hoping that they bypass us this time so this ground can dry out and they can get back to work on that building. Maybe she'll settle for those authentic thunderstorm CDs this time :). Suzie

We had that yucky greenish-gray sky for just a few minutes, and pea-sized hail fell briefly on the western edge of Thackerville. Very light rain is falling here now, but the thunder and lightning have already moved east of I-35. There is a big storm moving through southwestern OK and another moving towards OKC. The radar is linked below. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: weather radar

Hi Y'all, I watched the radar, the NWS weather page and the skies all the whole day long....endlessly.....and went to bed with it still being 79 degrees at 10:30 p.m. and wind out of the south. However, there were very dark clouds to our west/northwest from about 6 p.m. and lightning from about 8 p.m. I think the rain squall line moved across between 11 and 11:30 p.m. and we had a pretty lively thunderstorm for a little while. Our Mesonet station only recorded .21 but my rain gauge has .75, so I am delighted. The forecast gives most of us a chance at rain again this weekend too! I did notice in the late afternoon and early evening hours that some places had wind gusts over 50 m.p.h. and about 15 counties had some form of hail, with the worst of it being from golf ball sized to tennis ball sized. No hail here, thankfully. Today, even though the ground is wet, it is still very dry. The lovely humidity that came with our south winds is pretty much gone, and our humidity is already in the 30s and dropping, which is not a good thing. When the humidity hits about 18 percent, my skin feels like it is cracking. Yesterday, DH ran to town to sign a request from the county's fire chiefs to the county commissioners requesting implementation of a burn ban. I think 3/4s of the 14 fire chiefs have to sign the request before the commissioners will vote on whether or not to have a burn ban. I'll sleep better once they put a burn ban in effect because the fire pagers hopefully will go off less at night. Our autumn foliage was gorgeous yesterday morning. This morning, most of it is on the ground, with the wind having stripped the leaves off the cedar elms, ash, redbuds, peaches, hickories, honey locust, wild cherries, plums, pecans and some of the oaks. Our post oaks, red oaks and blackjack oaks still have their leaves, though, and some of those trees' foliage isn't even changing color yet. I guess cold weather is settling in and tomorrow will be much colder than today. The rain was terrific. I hope the areas hit by high wind and hail didn't receive too much damage. Dawn