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November 2004                                                                            Volume 7 - Number 2

    

 

Perspectives...

     

 

 

My Experience in the May 3rd 1999 Oklahoma City Tornado Outbreak

By Bill Fuller

 

 

After serving five years in the Air Force as a weather observer, I started working on my degree and ended up at the University of Oklahoma in 1998 to study meteorology. After one semester of physics and meteorological principals, I found my way into the business school, but did not give up on the need for the excitement of chasing down tornados. Spotting a tornado is actually harder than you might think, but an outbreak of tornados on May 3rd 1998 made it a lot easier.

                I honestly believe that severe storms and tornados are triggered by the scheduling of final exams at the University of Oklahoma. My first tornado experience while trying to study for exams was in October 1998, but I’ll save that for another article.  I was studying for my economics final the evening of May 3rd. It was an ordinary spring Oklahoma day with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms. My usual study routine included taking a break every hour or two for 15 to 20 minutes of television or music. My roommate was home that evening and had the TV set to the local news channel with the constant storm reports. By early evening it was clear that there would be some rough weather that night.

                My TV breaks got closer and closer together until I had finally given up on studying all together and joined my roommate Lisa to track the storm activity. By this time most of the surrounding areas were under a tornado advisory and a few had actually touched down in other parts of Oklahoma. Neither of us had ever seen a tornado other than on television, and we thought that this might be our perfect opportunity to catch a glimpse of a live one. One of the larger storms had developed far SW of Oklahoma City and was moving NE across the state. We decided this would be our target.

                We stayed glued to the television. We were waiting for the perfect time to get in the car and drive out to where we could get a good view of the passing storm. Around 8pm, the storm was a few miles SW of Oklahoma City so we decided to hit the road. As we left the house, we heard the tornado warning sirens blaring but decided that we had enough information from the National Weather Service to keep ourselves out of harms way. We left Norman, on almost deserted streets, and headed north on interstate 35. We only made it a couple of miles when we were stopped by the highway patrol. Luckily, we were stopped just in time to avoid the tornado that destroyed a portion of Moore, which is between Norman and Oklahoma City. As we sat in the car, we saw this huge black cloud that seemed to be sitting on the ground. It moved across the interstate and off to the NE. The picture in my head of what a tornado is supposed to look like (Wizard of OZ funnel) was nothing like what we saw. This tornado was 1 mile wide and just looked like a dark wall sliding across the land.

                We found out later that the tornado we were chasing was a deadly F5 containing the highest recorded wind speed on the planet, 318mph. It was actually only 1mph under the requirement for a tornado to be classified as an F6 (www.hprcc.unl.edu). We were not allowed to continue traveling north after the tornado passed, so we returned home to watch the coverage on the news.

                We were shocked to find out that more than 70 tornados touched down that night in Kansas, Oklahoma and northern Texas. 40 people were killed and thousands of homes were either damaged or destroyed (www.srh.noaa.gov). None of my friends lost their lives or homes in the tornado but many of them suffered damage. Our only damage 5 miles south of the tornado was a broken tree limb. It was amazing the next day driving down the highway through the damage. Entire neighborhoods were completely destroyed while across the street there was no damage at all. News coverage showed pictures of the cars from 35 which were not as lucky as we were. The cars were crumpled like old pieces of aluminum foil. Some cars were wrapped around telephone poles in such a way that the front bumper was touching the rear. The next time I hear the sirens I think I’ll just go ahead and go to the shelter and watch the coverage on the news. I can say now that I have seen a tornado in real life.

ad day for business as usual to change.