The wind comes sweeping down the plains......

At 4:30am last Thursday I was rudely woken up. My body was prepared for Tim MaGraw, Carrie Underwood, or Lady A to sing me awake, but was not prepared for a roaring wind outside my window to rudely wake me from dreamland. Having lived in tornado alley for quite a few years now, I am use to thunderstorms…..the cracking of thunder, the impressiveness of lighting (which I am secretly petrified of), the wind, the rain……….but my friends Thursday morning was a different sound.

As I lay in bed unable to hear my radio sitting on my bedside table right next to me, I realized this storm was something more than a typically Oklahoma thunderstorm. It was at this exact moment when I realized something was just not right, that we lost power. Like a dummy I laid in bed, paralyzed with fear, yet thinking I really need to seek shelter or at least get away from my bedroom window, so that anything that impales the window will not impale me as well. But sadly I continued to just lay there waiting for the terrifying noise outside my window to pass.

It did pass in time, our power came back on, and I immediately went to seek insight as to what just happened. As I flipped on the T.V., I noticed we were simply under a severe thunderstorm warning. I got up and began getting ready for the day. I was on my way out the door when I received a text from my boss explaining that the power may be out at the office and I could just stay put at home until she contacted me to tell me it was okay to come into work.

I never made it in to work last Thursday…………..our office didn’t have power restored until late afternoon, and the roads were covered with debris which made it difficult to navigate. As news began to filter in during the day it was determined that what I heard was not a thunderstorm after all, it was the winds generated from a tornado.

Since work was no longer on the books for the day, I ventured out to see what damaged had been done in our neighborhood……………………

Parts of roofs were missing…..


Trees were blown down……




Branches needed to be cut off power lines…..


There were many parts of town that looked like a war zone. Yet, the extraordinary blessing that came from this event was that not a single person was hurt from the 3-5 touch downs this tornado had in the Tulsa area.

Love,
Jen