They’ve been hit again by a terrible, massive tornado.
Jane and I were in OKC for the 1999 outbreak, and this one followed almost the identical track, except that it missed Tinker. This is a terrible mess.
Thinking of you, friends and relations in OKlahoma.
I think that pilot had more fun on that landing than he’d had in months…
Then there was the one, crossing the Continental Divide toward Denver—good old tough 737, rocky terrain, cloud-veiled, partly; and a helluva buffeting as we sank and rose, sank and rose….
Then, at the last before we cleared the Divide, the pilot came on and said, I quote, “Sorry, folks, the damned FAA won’t give us any more altitude. Hang on.”
We dropped, shot forward and down, ‘shot’ the wind-stream between two peaks, went over the last pass like a raft on a waterfall, headed groundwawrd, and you could both feel it and hear the plane creak and the engines work hard as the pilot pulled up out of that chute.
We leveled out and flew sedately on. There was applause in the cabin.
I don’t think anybody aboard that plane reported the language, not to the FAA or the airline, at least.
We had a suspected funnel or microburst pass right over our house about 5 years ago. We woke up to the whole house shaking and the train noise, and by the time we hit the stairs it was all over. No sirens. It swung a branch from our river birch into a 360, popping off a 2 foot piece of bark (which was cool to find the next morning.) There was a half mile long, very narrow strip of damage in the neighborhood, limbs torn off and busted windows. Radar never picked up anything.
My town was grazed by an F1 and about an hour later, took a direct hit from an F5. (05/11/1970) We were in the second house from the corner(just above the 1. here) (you’ll notice the name “Fujita” on the map-he analyzed our damage as part of the research for his scale.)The house on the corner across the alley was pulled down on the lady and killed her. I was living in the detached garage which had been converted to an apartment. Our house, three houses across the street from us, and the apartment building across the alley from us were the only buildings still standing on our block. Other than a broken window and having a couple of 2 x 4’s driven through the side of the house and through the roof (to the point they had to be hammered out from inside the attic) our house+garage was undamaged. The apartment behind us had the roof torn off. In the block just to the east of us is where the tornado developed multiple vortices for a few minutes and pretty much leveled everything until it hit downtown. The thing was on the ground for about 25 minutes. 26 dead, 500 injured. The tornado cut a diagonal swath through what was known as the “College Ghetto” an area of homes built in the 1920-1930’s where there was a lot of off campus housing — rent houses, garage apartments and apartment buildings — The tornado hit on a Monday. The college’s (now a university) spring semester had ended the previous Friday and many students had already left town on semester break or the death toll would have been much higher. We have the tallest building (20-stories) ever to survive a direct hit from an F5, Although the building is visibly twisted. it’s still standing, and still occupied.