Remember the Alamo!

They’ve confirmed that it was a F1 Tornado that touched down in Colleyville on Tuesday night. As far as tornados go, F1s are pretty wimpy. They only reach wind speeds of about 80-100 miles an hour, which is enough to blow over trees and power lines, or perhaps rip the roof or shingles off of a house, but usually don’t cause fatalities. Basically, after a F1, homeowners need to contact their insurance companies about getting a new roof!

Another thing that matters is the width. Our tornado was only a couple hundred yards in width.

Here's what an F1 would look like in the daytime. Notice, it's not even very dark- not enough debris.

However, just an HOUR north of us in Lone Grove Oklahoma, an F4 hit at the same time. F4s are a whole different story. Their windspeeds reach between 210-250 miles an hour! F4s flatten entire towns. Not a building remains in Lone Grove and 8 people have been reported killed. Smaller tornados also ripped through downtown Oklahoma City most of Tuesday night.

Here's a satellite view of the OK storm. Our storm was one of these thin fingers stretching out from the center.

Contrast this F4 with our wimpy F1!

Lone Grove search and rescue taking place yesterday

It’s hard to believe that all of this occurred just an hour north of us. It is comforting to know, however, that the last big tornado we had was in 2000, and it was only an F2. The most recent before that was an F2 in 1953 that was only a 100 feet wide. Dallas’ weather may be crazy, but we are not in tornado alley. Sure, there have been other strong tornados in Texas, but they occurred out in the flat country-side, far away from large cities.

So, if we have a small tornado every decade, I guess I can handle that. As long as it doesn’t flatten the Anthropologie down the road, I’m ok 🙂

For the past few days, it’s been all over the news- thunderstorms are coming! These usually occur in the spring, but since we’ve had a bit of a heat wave lately (70 degrees yesterday!!), it mixed with the cold winter winds. This always spells trouble- trouble in the form of violent storms.

The storms were supposed to start yesterday, but it was barely sprinkling as I drove in to work. Later in the day, it was even sunny. By the evening, it just felt like a balmy spring night. This was why I didn’t bring my umbrella OR a heavy jacket in with me to my Medieval Lyrics class at UD.

Around 9pm, about 2/3 of the way through my class, our professor grew visibly agitated. Those who were sitting on my side of the room facing the windows could see why- the occasional flash of lightning had ceased to occur every 10 minutes or so and had instead began to flash every 5-10 seconds. The bolts were growing closer and increasing in intensity.

All of a sudden, our professor stopped and said, “Well, this has been fun, but apparently the storm has decided to move in, and I don’t want anyone getting hit by lightning or hail. So, that’s all for tonight.” With that, she quickly gathered her stuff and walked briskly from the room. Everyone else did the same, joking the whole time about how fun it isn’t to drive in the rain.

I looked out the window again, and saw a huge fork of lightning streak across the sky. It was just light enough that I could also see the rain. Or, I should say, torrent of rain. And it was literally going SIDEWAYS. Like it was all caught within a whirlwind.

And that’s when I heard the tornado sirens go off. And I thought, “I’m going to die.”

Well, I didn’t die, I even made it home in one piece. It turns out that something very similar, if not a tornado, touched down in Colleyville. For those of you who know where that is, its 15 miles west of UD and about 2 miles from our house, where my hair salon is.

Here’s a picture of some of the damage that occurred:

Since the storm was moving east, however, by the time the storm hit UD the tornado had already happened. In other words, Jesse, who was at home, had already experienced the storm by the time I heard the sirens. So when I immediately called him in a panic, he knew what I was talking about. Since it was a very narrow storm, only about 10 miles across, it had already stopped raining at home where Jesse was.

But where I was at UD, it was torrential. Just picture buckets of water going sideways, with lightning every 5 seconds and winds that sounded like a locomotive. They said the wind reached 88 miles an hour.

But true to what Jesse had said, 10 minutes later I was able to run to the car without barely even getting wet. Driving home was hazardous, only because there was so much water on the road that I couldn’t see the lane lines. I even went through a puddle that washed a wall of water over my sunroof and down the other side.

But I am safe. And grateful. Whew, Texas weather is exciting!