In the poem, April showers bring May flowers. In real life, April brings tornadoes. It’s just part of living in the Midwest. I don’t know what the actual odds of being hit by a tornado are, but I’ve been living in Oklahoma my entire life and I’ve actually only seen two tornadoes with my own eyes. One was over twenty years ago. The other was last night.

(Thanks to roushimsx for the screen capture!)

When the projected path of a tornado (seen above with the red line) is drawn through your neighborhood, it’s time to get out of the way. My house is basically where the white dot just below the “nâ€? in Yukon is. From my upstairs window I can plainly see the Xerox plant listed as the 8:14pm arrival point. If it were just me I’d probably take my chances, but with two little ones we decided below ground shelter was the best course of action.

In record time we whisked the kids into car seats and made our way over to mom’s house, who lives about five miles away. On the way, off to the west, we saw the tornado. The news said it was either a strong F1 or a weak F2 (an F5 is the highest), but trust me, when you’re looking at a tornado in real life heading toward you, an F1 looks plenty big.

We made it to mom’s a few minutes later, but never had to go down in the cellar. Mostly we just watched the storm go by to our north. I mostly watched from the front porch. The lightning show was phenomenal. For a solid 10-15 minutes thunder rumbled, so much so that there was never a break in the sound. When the lightning was at its peak there were times where at least one part of the sky behind the wall cloud was always lit. It was awesome to watch.

Fortunately for us, very little damage was done. The only major damage occurred at a small airport, outside of town. Still, the first tornado of the year is always a reminder that we do live in tornado alley, and that nature can pretty much wipe us out at any point.