Norman Tornado! No joke!!!

So Travis and I had just settled into bed and were watching the news when I happened to see a lightning flash outside the bedroom window. I asked if he saw it and he said no and looked at me like I was crazy...there are no storms tonight...and they had not mentioned anything about storms on the news (which usually brings headlines :) So, I shrugged it off as just a flash from the TV. A few moments later the thunder proved I was right!!!

Of course we head straight out the back door to watch it from the back porch. We had a perfect view....it looked as though the storm literally started behind our fence. So, we pulled up a chair and watched as it grew before our eyes. It was incredible! At one point I asked Travis about a "hangy down thing" I saw, but figured it was just me hoping to see a real tornado. We both agreed it was probably just that, my imagination.

We had a couple of lightning strikes that were WAY too close for comfort so I went back inside to check radar on TV. They were finally talking about the storm that just "exploded" over Norman. The weather radio went off almost simultaneously....3 times in a row! First T-Storm Watch, then Warning, then extended the warning to 5 AM. Within 10 minutes or so it went off again, this time TORNADO WARNING FOR CLEVELAND COUNTY including East Norman!!!! From radar we could tell that it was just to the SE of us and we were in the clear provided there was no back building (didn't appear to be) so we watched outside the back porch.

So, that "hangy down thing" happened to be this weak tornado....I just couldn't see the bottom of it! We could only see the portion above the power lines, and it was not quite as well defined when we were watching, but that is pretty much what we saw! Plus, this pic was taken from the South side of the storm whereas we were watching from the North side of the storm. It was awesome, this was the best way to chase storms...right from the back porch with the safety of the storm shelter close by :)

This picture was taken by a storm tracker who happens to live in some apts off HWY 9, not far from where the tornado touched down. They have determined that it touched down around between Alameda and Lindsey around 36th. That's about 1.5 - 2 miles South and 3 miles East of our house :)

Check out this storm chaser's info here...http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=21087

Here is the radar. I marked the location of our house so you can see exactly how awesome the view was from our backyard. We got a few minutes of heavy rain, but that was the extent of it for us. After the rain stopped, you could see huge towering storm clouds to the right of our
backyard and on the left side of the yard it was a beautiful clear night sky with stars...go figure!