So this afternoon I met Willie (the girl I'm sort of seeing) at the library, and we were both working on homework, had our laptops out, the usual grad student nerd date. It had started to rain on my walk over at about 3:00 p.m. CST, and had started to seriously storm soon after. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Sometime around 4:00 p.m. CST, a library employee came by our table and said, "Tornado sirens are going off. Get in the basement." We looked through the cafe beside us and out the windows on the other side, and everything outside was this weird glowly green color. I'd heard that sometimes before tornadoes hit, the sky turns green, but never knew what that meant. It wasn't just the sky -- everything looked like a great green light was falling on it. Spooky. About that time a voice came over the intercom telling people that tornadoes had been reported in the area and to get in the basement immediately.
Being good lemmings, we gathered our belongings and moved to the center stairwell where every single person in the library was trying to descend into the basement at the same time. We were surprised by how many people were there because the library didn't seem that crowded on the first floor. So we got to stand around the basement, full of large heavy bookshelves, with hundreds of other people waiting to see what would happen.
We never got a tornado, but we did get lots of rain and thunder and lightning. The streets around campus flooded because of all the water, so that made walking to my car, after we spent a few more hours in the library doing work, an adventure unto itself.
Apparently, several tornadoes did hit around Oklahoma City and Edmond, but that's about an hour to the south. My initiation to Oklahoma tornadoes is now over, and I have lots to look forward to over the next four years. Tornado season doesn't officially start for more than a month. Yay!
10 February 2009
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4 comments:
Spooky! We had a tornado warning during our second week of classes last semester and we too had to file into the basement, except we had to go outside to get there, and the sky wasn't very menacing.
to prepare you for the coming summer, here's a awesome shot by storm chaing photographer jim reed.
http://www.apanationalcontest.com/#at=0&mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p=0&a=4
check his website for more prep on what to see. i would like to see one myself.
I was gonna call you yesterday afternoon and ask if you were gettin' some action down there...I decided against it because I am still waiting for my (promised) birthday phone call, and, you know, I didn't want to step on your toes there. ;)
I'm glad to hear that all is well and that the sky really was green. I never really believed that. Yup, that's right...The guy who once looked up because someone (you, I think) said the sky was orange didn't believe that. Funny, huh?
Max: That's really funny, I actually thought about making you check to see if the sky was orange. Not because the sky was green though. As we were walking to my car, I commented on the water flowing down the street resembling a stream. Willie said, "look, there's a fish." So I looked because, in that moment, I honestly wouldn't have been surprised to see a koi swimming down the road. Being gullible made me think of you.
Phone call coming.
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