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

Bon, I believe we've been either 27 or 28 days with no rainfall greater than 0.25" on any given day. Our rainfall for the month of April was slightly less than one inch. In a normal April we'll get 3 or 4" of rain. Usually this sort of dryness doesn't hit us here until June, or maybe even July in a really wet year. It isn't just the lack of rainfall that is discouraging. Our temperatures are running much higher than usual, and it is fairly windy every day. So, with it being hotter and windier than usual, and with little rain falling, everything is drying out very quickly. It is so dry here now that it is hard to believe our ground was totally saturated in March. At this point, March seems like a long, long time ago. One good heavy rainfall would help a lot, but we have virtually zero chance of having any rain in the next seven days according to our local TV met who is usually right about such things. After last year, I was hoping for a nice, wet spring, and it seemed like we were having one here until April arrived. Dawn

Impatience, They still do that here! Last night, our county deputies and other storm spotters were out spotting storms. The one closest to us was on a bridge about a mile from our house as the crow flies. I was glad knowing he was there since it is on much higher ground than we are and I knew he'd see the tornadoes before we did. And he did, too, so we had advance warning to stop staring at the sky and get into the shelter. They do not necessarily drive around with their sirens on alerting people in our county depending on where the storms are because Thackerville, Marietta, Shady Dale and Greenville, I think, all have storm sirens that the firefighters sound when a tornado is spotted near them or is known to be moving towards them. Out in less populated areas, some of the firefighters do drive around in the firetrucks sometimes sounding their sirens to alert folks. Leava, I'm glad to hear you and Jeff are alright and the storm missed y'all. We were really worried about you last night as the storms sounded too close to yall for comfort. I would have been worried about you, Miraje, but I knew you were chasing the storms while the rest of us were running from them. I am glad they missed your home. Suzie, I was nervous on your behalf, just hoping you made it home from work before it got to your place. I knew you had a shelter and would be in it if you got home before the storm arrived, so I'm glad you left work early. Down here, the Ardmore schools let the kids out at 1 p.m., so I knew that folks in Carter County were indeed watching the skies and taking the storms seriously. Apparently a lot of schools around the state did that too, and I think it is a smart move. I'm hoping they find the 3-year-old alive too even though I know the odds are against it. Last night many of Tim's and Chris's coworkers from the D-FW metro area were calling and texting us and checking on us throughout the storms. Ironically, after we were in the clear here, the D-FW metro area was hit by much worse storms that we had here in Love County, and some of those co-workers had much more storm damage than we did. Dawn

Adella, are you doing an above ground or below ground one? Got friends with both. The friend with the above ground one seems to always have it full of junk. The below ground one can be entered even if a car is in the garage. The opening is just barely in front of the car. Roger had it put in after the Edmond Tornado in 2009. That one was only 2 miles from his house. I am not sure, if I will add one here. To wet when it rains for below ground... and not enough space for above ground. Besides, I am not to keen on the above ground ones. If I do a below, it will have to be in the back yard, but there is no way to put heavy equipment back there, just no room to get it back. Moni