May 20th Tornado│Moore, OK

[iLLGT3]

If any of you have tuned into your local news either last night or this morning, you may have heard about the crazy tornado that touched down and ran through Moore, Oklahoma yesterday afternoon..

 

Talk about dodging bullets! The past 3 days have been some crazy ones here in the Oklahoma City metro area.. On the 19th we witnessed an F4 drop out of the sky onto the centere of Edmond, a city north of me. Some decent damage was recorded.. Yesterday though was a completely different story.. I was playing ArmA3 for a bit before I came out of my room to get something to drink.. I overheard talk on the tele about bad weather so I went to see what was going on.. This tornado had just touched the ground in a small town south of me called Newcastle.. Things were not looking too good.. Our local tornado sirens were going off as just a warning and had apparently been going off for quite some time as my grandmother had told me though I was just first hearing them. As I watched this thing grow, and hearing what was being said on the news, I began to get very worried.. (though at this point, that we were out of the danger zone as tornadoes very rarely track due north)

 

News helicopters followed the tornado into Moore and before you knew it, the tornado was right on top of the city. It was cited several times that the tornado itself was well over a mile and a half and at one point, two miles across. News stations were telling people that if you are not underground, you need to do so now. Storm shelters are somewhat of a common thing around here because of these storms though they rarely get this big.. When you are told to get underground, it basically means that if you are not, and in the direct path of one of these this large, you could more than likely lose your life.

 

Anyway, enough of the tldr's, here's some during/afters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full album can be found here.

 

I have no doubt in my mind that this tornado will be catagorised as the second or third worst tornado ever recorded in terms of sheer size on the EF scale. In May of 1999, we witnessed a similar tornado take roughly the same path as the one yesterday. The one in 1999 was so large that the scale at the time, the Fujita Scale, had to be re writtend to the Enhanced Fujita Scale which is used today.

 

 

Enjoy my terrible writing! At least I'm still here to continue it!

 

~ Jeff

[The Compensator]

Holy mother nature Batman. :eek:

 

Glad you're okay, iLL! Thankfully I live in a tornado-free area, I'd be freaking out if there were tornados. :)

[Guest MrLolololXD]

Wow... That's just... awful, for lack of a better word.

 

How close did it end up coming to where you live?

 

It's been on the news here heaps, last I heard 51 people were confirmed dead, 7 of those were children.

[Eudemon]

I heard about this thing on the news when I woke-up, I mean two miles wide, just think about that for a moment, I can't even imagine seeing something like that even in the distance and not feeling some terror coursing through me. Those pics especially that top one really bring home the power nature has and I am glad to hear you're ok mate, keep safe as this is the season for these things now isn't it?

 

Real shame that one of the places it seemed to hit hard was a school. :(