One of the areas obliterated by the May 3, 1999 tornado

This is an off topic post, but one that I decided I must write regardless of the fact it is limited by geography. I won’t do many of these, but on this day I felt that it was all I could think about. I couldn’t think up another post because this tornado hurt my hometown so significantly. On May 3, 1999, my city had a tornado that was one of the most violent on record in United States history. Oklahoma City is a city of about 1,000,000 people including the suburbs. My home at the time was in the middle of a war zone. The aftermath of this tornado delayed traffic for months and displaced hundreds of families. My husband was a student at the University of Oklahoma. He was studying for a difficult Economics final that day and was oblivious to the weather forecast. He left a popular cafe on the campus of the University of Oklahoma and drove right into the storm only exiting the highway because it was raining too hard for him to see out the windshield of his 1984 Audi 4000S. The tornado hit moments after his exit. I was holed away with our two year old twin daughters in my aunt’s storm cellar.

While our house was not damaged, our entire neighborhood had traffic re-routed for weeks. I-35 was re-routed for months as debris was removed. It was impossible to get out of our neighborhood to go to work. In the ensuing months, it was common to drive around our neighborhood and see houses that had been “totaled” by insurers marked with spray paint, “State Farm,” “Farmers,” and so forth. In short, it was a rough time in our city. 

To give you an idea of the seriousness of the F5 tornado that tore through the Oklahoma City area, there was $1.1 billion worth of damage. 36 people were killed. Unlike a hurricane, there is little or no opportunity to escape the damage of a tornado. Specific conditions must exist for a tornado to happen. The May 3, 1999 tornado had winds exceeding 320 mph.

To read more and watch a video, see this link: http://www.newsok.com/viewing-may-3-1999-through-many-eyes/article/3366246?custom_click=headlines_widget

Also see this Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Tornado_Outbreak