The Moore's News: Tornado's

Well on May 10th my family in Norman, Oklahoma came VERY VERY close to a tornado. I talked to my mom on my way home around 4:45pm and she was highly concerned about bad weather in Moore (North of Norman) because my brother works North of Oklahoma City and has to drive through Moore. So she was trying to get a hold of him. Then all of a sudden the line went dead. I figured my phone just dropped the call since I was driving so I called her back. It went straight to voice mail. I thought nothing of it and figured I'd talk to her later. Probably about 15-20 minutes later my brother calls panicked. Asking had I heard from mom or dad in the last 10 minutes. I told him I had not and then he tells me he is at work and the maps on the news are showing the storm directly over where my parents live. So of course he gets me worried, I immediately call the house...it's dead, I call mom's cell and she answers. Their lights are out and they were in the garage listening to the radio on their car. Probably about 15 minutes later I hear from her that they are now in their storm shelter and both dogs are in my dad's closet in their bedroom. She says they hear the hail but are not sure what is going on of course. Probably 20 minutes later I had not heard anything and the news starts reporting how Norman was hit. I start to hear Highway 9 being mentioned (my parents neighborhood is off hwy 9) and then I hear Lake Thunderbird was hit (my parents live only minutes from the lake) so of course now I'm panicked. Trying to get a hold of my parents and my brother. I finally hear from mom and they were fine (Thank God!!) but many houses just minutes away were destroyed or damaged. There was one tornado but it split into 2 F4 tornado's as you can see from the picture above. Had it not split...It's scary to imagine what the size would have been. My parents house is within the bottom tornado's path, which shows that the tornado DID go directly over my parents but by the grace of God the funnel had gone back up before going over my parents. It then came back down once it got to the lake.

These pictures were of Little Axe (the next town east of my parents) where a grocery store (Country Boys IGA) was completely destroyed. You can see the entrance sliding doors left. In one of the pictures you can see a white room which I am assuming is the freezer where all the customers and staff had to go when the tornado hit.

These are pictures of the tornado that went north of my parents house. This is 4.5 minutes North West of my parents. Their was literally a wide path where the trees were just tore up or gone as you can see in the pictures below from where the F4 tornado went through. Several houses were destroyed in this area.

I went down to visit this past weekend and got to see a lot of the damage. It was very sad. My parents only had a couple shingles come off and several branches down. However, a few days later Norman had another high wind storm come through which caused a huge tree to the side of their house to fall on their back fence and porch. My dad is in the process of clearing that away as much as he can while they wait on their insurance. I've posted several pictures.

These pictures are of the tree that fell on my parent's fence and porch. Plus their storm shelter which I am so glad they had put in when they bought the house. It's surprising how many houses do NOT have storm shelters!!