Our first tornado experience

 Spoiler alert: There was no tornado.

Yesterday afternoon, the weather was sunny in some parts of the sky while gloomy in others. The air and atmosphere felt completely normal. Liam and I were just sort of relaxing at home after finishing up our lessons for the day (subtracting fractions, the Louisiana Purchase, and The Reformation).  At 2 pm, I got an alert on my phone: Tornado Watch until Wed, Mar 17 at 8:00pm.

WHAT.

This is what the skies looked like when the tornado warning was issued.

We played musical cars and got them to fit into the garage in case there was damaging hail. Cory schooled me on the storm radar and what we might see on the radar (an app on my phone) that could produce a tornado. Overall, the sky was still clear and calm so it felt a little confusing to me! Liam was on "medium alert" as, like me, he'd never experienced this before. He was a little nervous, but he said later that Cory and Kristen's calm attitude made him realize he didn't need to panic. 

Before too long, the skies in downtown Tulsa darkened and clouds began to form. Blake was watching this all unfold from his work site downtown. Hail started falling, a little bigger than your average BB sized hail. Fellow workers were holding their hard hats out the window trying to gather a nice collection of hail. Everyone was in good spirits and not very concerned. They just laughed, caught hail, and watched the storm. It's going to take me a while to get used to the nonchalant attitude Oklahomans have about tornados! I must say, it is a little refreshing after living in Washington where everyone made a very big deal about wind storms, even though they were such a frequent occurrance!

Blake's view of the storm.

There were actually several storms that formed all around this area of the country and some did produce tornadoes, or so I read. No tornadoes formed in Oklahoma, however, things got pretty exciting by our house (the one we are building). Our house sits in Verdigris which, as you can see in the photo below, is under the purple part of the radar which indicates possible tornado formation areas. The sirens went off in our neighborhood (I later read this on Facebook... I didn't actually hear any) and presumably, our soon-to-be neighbors took cover. 

This is the local tornado expert whose advice everyone listens to! Our house is being built in Verdigris.

Speaking of taking cover, we are still debating which type of shelter we want! There's the underground option in the garage or the above ground option that would go in our master closet. There are merits for both (maybe I'll go into that in a future blog post!), and I think we're leaning towards the above-ground type, but we haven't decided yet. We will use the next few weeks to do research in person and talk to experts to help us decide! 

For what it's worth, most people here don't even HAVE a shelter. It's so strange to me!