I appreciate both yours and Gordon Keen's messages.
Firstly, as far as death and destruction go, this was a sad, but
normal sort of event. Woodward is a small town in the Northwestern
part of our state and it has the dubious distinction of having
been almost wiped off the map in 1947 when another large tornado
hit and killed 151 people.
In the tornado of last Saturday, the central control
point for the siren system apparently failed and there was no backup
transmitter to send out the signal.
These storms went through between Midnight and 4 or 5 in
the morning when most people would have been in bed. Three of
the deaths occurred in a mobile home which is absolutely the
last place you want to be when tornados are active.
Had all the sirens worked, there was a further problem
in that the officials who would have blown them only got 3
minutes warning that a tornado had formed. It was a bad deal all
around but also rather typical of life in Tornado Alley as this
part of the United States is called.
Night time tornados are horrible because nobody can
usually see them until it is too late. A lightning flash may
light them up for an instant or people may see power lines
arcing as the wind blows power lines together, but radar is our
best indicator at night.
Radar, however, may not indicate the funnel-shaped cloud
if it is just forming or it happens to be behind other storms or
blocked from view for some other reason.
I really don't know much about the town of Woodward as
it is maybe 200 miles or so away, but it is a farming community
out on the prairie with wheat fields, a few wind power turbines
and a few oil rigs and hard-working decent people.
They interviewed one lady who must be around 80 who lost
her home on Saturday. She lived in Woodward in 1947 and lost her
home then, also. She had a safe place to go this time and is
quite alive today.
We got strong winds, a frog-strangling 3 inches of rain
in maybe an hour or so and they blew our sirens several times
around 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning but the tornados that had
been spotted on radar never hit town. Needless to say, we didn't
sleep very well Friday night and Saturday morning and then we
got it again around 5 o'clock Sunday morning only this time
without tornados. It's nice, clear and cool today. The Sun was
even shining when I walked to work.
Mary Stores writes:
> that's scary the sirens weren't working in that one place. Very scary
> stuff. Thanks for sending the article
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