Ahh.. power is back on
The Oklahoma tornado came within a couple miles of my house and a few blocks from my sister and Scooter from FetishCash's house. Powerlines are down all over and power just came back on about 5 hours after it went off. Went outside and could see the debris and dust cloud from the tornado as it went by.
It was hot and humid as hell afterwards so I decided to take the family over to my mom's house. What is normally a 15 minute drive took almost 3 hours because of all the people trying to avoid the backed up interstates to get home from work and see if their house was hit. Saw plenty of downed trees and powerlines. Saw several cars that had been in the tornado but still were drivable. Not hard to identify them.. no windows, lots of dents, and covered in mud. Saw one car drive by that was missing the roof. Pretty crazy.
Stayed at my mom's and watched the news. Saw several views from the news helicopters that showed levelled houses just a hundred feet from where I had driven by. Hard to tell from the ground what the destruction is. Saw the Mexican restaraunt we eat at often was pretty much destroyed. Many of the businesses where I shop at regularly were gone.
Fucked up thing is May 3, 1999 the strongest ever recorded tornado passed along almost the same path. Many of the houses and businesses lost today were pretty new, rebuilt after the last tornado.
The GM plant that was hit was about 15 miles away. It is pretty vital to the economy around here so it will be interesting to see what happens. Tinker AFB was rght on the other side of the GM plant but because the storm was weakened some after hittnig the GM plant it didn't so any damage to the corner of the base it hit. Knocked over a few fences and that was all. Once it got past the base it came on strong again and continued wreaking destruction for another 45 minutes but it was pretty much over rural areas so not much damage was reported.
I'm going to try to go out tomorrow and get some pictures. Can't wait to see how many places I can recognize now. From what I have seen on the news it doesn't look like much.
Mother Nature can be a cruel bitch!