Scary day

So as most of you probably already know (unless you've been living under a rock with no TV) we had a nasty tornado outbreak on Monday. Thankfully, we are ok and our home did not suffer any damages. Sadly, many were not so lucky... NOAA has confirmed 12 tornadoes in the state, 4 of them in the OKC metro area. There were 5 fatalities and 60+ injuries.

Here is a video shot by a local submitted to our ABC news affiliate, KOCO5. It starts off silent but the audio kicks in after about 30 sec. The guy on the radio (about 1/2 way through) is my favorite Meteorologist, Rick Mitchell. The others get too boisterous and scare me senseless...

Also, some crazy pics... courtesy of KOCO5!

WOW... seriously, wow.

Baseball size hail... this could kill you.

So where were we when this all went down? Well, Ben was at work, hunkered down in their safe room. I was at school, after just taking a Chem test. I was trying to decide whether or not to drive home (and try to beat the storms that were racing into the city) or stay put. Fortunately for me, the security guards made the decision for me because as I was texting back and forth with Ben, they started shouting, "Tornado on the ground, everyone follow me... NOW! No one leaves this building!" So... off I went, to the the science building's safe rooms (i.e. labs) and hid there for a good hour or so. They pulled up KOCO5's live streaming coverage online and we watched it on the overhead projector screen. Ben and I stayed in contact for most of that time via cellphone. Once the tornadoes were well to our east, they let us go. Fortunately, we only got golf-ball sized hail, which yes... left dings on my already dinged up car. Such is life in OK. At least my windshield/windows were intact.

I raced home to check on our home since a tornado had touched down in Bethany, which is a neighborhood (or rather subset of OKC) just a few blocks away from where we live. I had purposely left the pups locked up in the kitchen, hoping their instincts would tell them to hide in our pantry/safe room. Thankfully, the pups were just fine, as was out house. Nothing but a messy backyard (branches, leaves, and random debris) to show for it... phew!

My school has been closed for 2 days though, as it has no water because of some damage. My last final has been rescheduled, which I guess is a good thing... although I much rather get it over with, but whatever. All in all, we were VERY lucky and blessed to have escaped unharmed and with our property undamaged.

Well, looks like this evening will be active as well. Tornado warnings are popping up in western OK. We'll be in for some of this later on tonight... *sigh*