There’s a tornado warning tonight. Heavy rain, stupid wind, the whole package. So we’re locking down, and while I wait for it to pass, I’m thinking about why I still live here.
The part people don’t understand
I live in Oklahoma. To a lot of people that sounds boring, or they just don’t see the appeal. But it’s been home for most of my life. I was born here, and I’ve lived here all but about nine years. I love it. I really do. Our family is here. Our friends are here. It runs a little light on the entertainment side, but all in all it’s a great place to live.
Until tornado season. Then I don’t like Oklahoma very much at all.
We’ve been near some of the worst tornadoes in the state’s history. Two of them I can’t forget.
May 3, 1999: the dinner I didn’t cook
My wife and I had been married four, almost five months. My parents were driving up from the south part of the state and called to ask if we were going to fix dinner for them, or if they should grab something on the road.
I told them to go ahead and eat. We were already eating. We’d see them in a little while.
The way my dad tells it, they came up I-35 about five minutes behind the tornado. A mile wide. It had just crossed the interstate, and they drove through the wreckage it left behind.
Five minutes. If I’d been a better host that night, they would have been in it. I’ve never been so grateful to not have extra food.
2013: the night it chased us
I’d brought pizza home after work. Then a major tornado warning came up. We knew which way it was headed, so we did what seemed like the smart thing: drive south, get out of its path, wait it out, come back.
Every single time we guessed where that thing was going, it went the opposite direction. And followed us. It felt like it chased us around town for a solid hour. My wife, our son, me, and our two dogs, in a car, with a pizza going cold. Our son was four, maybe five.
We ended up on the south side of Oklahoma City. I looked up and saw circulation in the clouds, right there, just over from us. Fight or flight kicked in, and flight won. I drove to get us out of there as fast as I could.
And drove straight back into the heaviest rain I have ever been in. You couldn’t see ten feet in front of the car. Then it started to hail. I don’t like hail. I especially don’t like hail when I know there are tornadoes in the area and I can’t see the road and we are getting the snot beat out of us.
I remember very clearly the moment we drove north out of that cell and saw sunlight. The relief swept over all of us. Everything was okay. But it had been so stressful for so long that okay took a while to feel like okay.
Tonight
So all these years later, when the warning goes up, I pay attention. We get prepared. We don’t get in the car.
The house we live in now has a safe room, and if it comes to that, that’s where we’ll be. We’re going to lock down and weather this one.
I will be praying. The two times it mattered most, we were okay, and I’m grateful. I have faith we will be this time as well.
See you on the other side of the storm.
