An Eery Silence

As promised in my previous post, here is the unexpected turn in our exploration adventure. On our way back home Mr. Man randomly decided to turn up this street instead of just going home. We drove about a quarter of a mile when we started seeing some downed powerlines next to brand new poles. In Oklahoma this means one of two things...either the sight was caught by wind or a tornado. Judging by our location and incredible knowledge (thanks to D. Payne and the rest of KFOR) we knew it was the latter.

We continued driving and I really thought maybe we'd see some trees bent and broken but nothing could have prepared me for what we saw.

As we drove farther I began to get an unsettled feeling like something wasn't right. It was about that time when I glanced at the top of a hill and realized that the house or farm or whatever it was that was supposed to be there wasn't. We sat there staring in disbelief with a driveway leading to nothing on one side of our street and the mangled top of a silo on the other, close enough to touch.

An eery silence came over us as we sat there and I had this strange urge to get out of the car and kneel on this broken land. I felt the power of the tornado speak through it's damage and felt an urge to tell the tornado I understood. I finally understood what it was capable of.

Pictures are sad and unsettling but following a path of destruction and seeing with your own eyes the sheet metal sticking through a tree or the soda can wrapped around a barb wire fence or a hundred year old tree twisted like a piece of paper turned into a telescope is beyond words. It's an experience I think everyone in Oklahoma needs. We all laugh about Mike Morgan's weather tie and D. Payne's sense of adventure but if you weren't below ground and this tornado was a direct hit, you didn't stand a chance. Seeing the destruction with my own eyes and feeling the power of this amazing storm sealed my mind that if there is ever a chance a tornado might come towards me we leave! We will no longer wait and see...we leave!

My Mr.Man took numerous pictures and I'm sure he's posted them to his blog...check out becksbytes.blogspot.com