How can God allow this to happen? Why do bad things happen to good people. (Enter any other cliche question here) Disasters happen every day. Someone somewhere experiences sudden loss or devastation. The result is usually us questioning how a loving and compassionate God could allow such tragedy to occur. However, the flaw is not with God. Because He is flawless. The flaw is with us. The flaw is…

It feels as if the earth is crumbling:  Harvey and Houston, Irma and the Caribbean--now marching Her way towards to west coast of Florida where I have family and friends; Jose is not far behind her ready to wreak more havoc. The pacific NW is on fire, Mexico got hit with a devastating earthquake and SW Asia is experiencing historic flooding affecting millions.  

Yeah news is having memorial vids of it and I'm just.. nope. Worked with a few kids who moved to Tulsa area from Moore. Very matter of fact cool about it and I wanted to squish them with hugs. a neighborhood down the road from me was hit by E1 or something and so much damage...and just knowing what they went through.  I was freaked out by our touch down I couldn't imagine doing this all as a kid.

I know. It just floors me. I can still hear in my head the panicked cries of the kids in the hallway from our tornado’s near miss that afternoon when I was working at the afterschool program; the thought of so many kids going through that and then actually getting hit, being trapped under the rubble, some of them dying, then the trauma the survivors faced afterwards... it’s just too awful. I wish I hadn’t watched that video.

Though the one part that was helpful to see was the interview the next day with the teacher who had taken the video. She was pointing out where various classes took shelter — so many of the rooms were basically gone, piles of rubble and mangled cars, except for the corners the kids took shelter in, and frankly, that seems miraculous. Seven beautiful children were lost that day, but two entire schools were hit straight on — it could have been so, so much worse. I’m so thankful it wasn’t worse. 

US News

In tornado-ravaged Moore, Okla., a town endures under ‘the mercy of the sky’

As forecasters predict heavy storms, flooding and other dangerous weather for the Memorial Day weekend, those in the North Texas-Oklahoma region are bracing themselves. The fear and subsequent preparation have become somewhat of a regional, seasonal tradition. Almost no other city in the world has been as unlucky with storms as Moore, Oklahoma. Six times in 17 years the town has been hit by a significant tornado, including a mile-wide twister with winds measured at more than 200 mph that killed 24 people on May 20, 2013. Mother Nature has been so unsparing that many locals refer to Moore as “the tornado alley of tornado alley.” The storms have been so frequent that people there have little doubt they will be hit again.

It’s a fear of the inevitable. You don’t want it to happen again, but you know we’re probably going to see another tornado.

Moore city manager Steve Eddy

First Significant Severe Weather Event of the Season Strikes Oklahoma

This past Wednesday severe storms erupted across much of Oklahoma bringing with them very large hail and even tornadoes. It was the biggest severe weather day this year in the states, up to now (but many more are to come). A surface low was located in central Oklahoma with dryline extending southward, cold front crashing south from the north side of the low, and a warm front extending northeastwards from the low. There were two main focus areas for the storms – along the dryline and near the triple point/along the warm front. A moderate risk was issued by the SPC and covered the areas of concern. The outlook also included a 5% tornado risk with 45% hatched hail probabilities. A moderate jet streak was in place with dewpoints in the high teens, which together provided sufficient shear and CAPE for supercells.

As expected, several storms initiated on Wednesday afternoon and grew into supercells. Two supercells were of most concern before storms consolidated into squall lines: one near Tulsa and one near Oklahoma City. The storm that approached Tulsa showed strong rotation on radar early in its lifetime –a tornado warning was able to be issued well before it hit the city. By the time it reached a suburb of Tulsa, Sand Springs, a tornado touched down and tore through a trailer park. In addition to that, hail, the size of tennis balls, were reported in Tulsa’s metro region as the supercell’s hail core passed over the city. The tornado (preliminary rating of EF-2) injured over a dozen people and one person lost their life in the trailer park.

Aerial view of the damage to the trailer park in Sand Springs. (Source: Tulsa World)

The Oklahoma City storm fired off the dryline initially but then got undercut by the cold front – meaning it had little tornado potential. Interestingly enough, the supercell was able to catch up to the cold front and interact with it, enhancing the vorticity in the area – likely being a contributing factor to the formation of the tornado. With this mesoscale interaction playing a significant part in the cause of the tornado, not much lead time was provided to residents (it happened quickly). Unfortunately the twister (preliminary rating of EF-1) touched down in the city of Moore, OK which got hit by a devastating twister in 2013 and had seen two other strong tornadoes since 1999. No injuries were associated with this one, thankfully.

Compilation of radar images before/during/after the Moore tornado showing the storm’s interaction with the cold front. (Image compilation by @VORTEXJeff / Twitter)