OKLAHOMA TORNADO 2004 POSTCARD

location: Duncan-Velma area, Stephens County, OKLAHOMA, THE SOONER STATE, Tornado Alley, somewhere in the 900,000,000(nine-hundred-million)square miles of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: est.1776. ____________________________________________________________________Photo name"G.M. Baby Hummer vs. OKLAHOMA Tornado" photo taken of a tornado being sheared and torn apart by the OKLAHOMA wind. ____________________________________________________________________ I guess you would say this was my first attempt at storm-chasin. Really?, do you need to storm-chase in OKLAHOMA. That's like someone from Chicago looking to get shot or murdered. Just walk a few blocks in Chicago and pop,pop,pop. _________________________ __________________________________ I think whoever invented that word Storm-chasing to give people who never grew up in Tornado Alley something to do here on vacation. You really don't need to chase them, they come to you..(Only kidding!, The reason for storm-chasing was to get ground confirmation of Tornado touching down. Thus helping save lives.) ____________________________________________________________________ That day I got up & checked the weather forecast,(Storms), & I went to work. As I walked into Crap-mart, a huge bolt of lightning struck the store and the lights went off then flickered back on. A customer asked me, "What was that?". I told her it was the Wrath of God. She half laughed and half was scared and looked at me like are you serious. Well as usual my supervisor was really being a super-a$$h0le, so I decided to take the day off. (advisory-not all crap-marts are crappy, but this one was super-crappy with super-a$$hole bosses. One of my friends worked @ a crap-mart in Virginia and it was awesome super cool booger.) ____________________________________________________________________ I had another job lined up anyway. So I went home to check out weather footage and forecast. Several counties over there was multiple tornados. Television stations in Lawton/Fort Sill and Oklahoma City were doing a good job of tracking the storms. They were even saying what field, what block, which barbed wire fence tornados were at. So we had time to relax and watch. ____________________________________________________________________ But as usual, some government agency comes on t.v. to state the obvious! "There has been a Tornado Warning issued for this county take shelter!". Then the t.v. goes blank playing country music._______________________________________________________________ Wow jack@ss!, as if the blackened skies and hailstones the size of softballs didn't give it away! So now we have no idea where the tornado is cause t.v. is still blank blaring country music. So now you can't relax anymore cause you have no idea when and where the tornado hits. Cause some moron (in their infinite wisdom to protect the dumb who are not paying attention to the weather) interrupts the best meteorologists and storm-chasers in the world.(As usual the government thinks they know best, their warnings are usually too late and not detailed. Just like the government requiring airbags for dummies who don't wear seatbelts. Now the deathrate of people who wear seatbelts has risen while the ones who don't have fallen. Stupid airbags!)____________________________________________________________________ So i decide to leave and go check out storm before it hits us. I take my camera and my trusty Baby Hummer Truck,(General Motors s-10 truck Hombre) and my radio. ____________________________________________________________________ I start heading southwest towards Empire-Meridian area but I run into hail the size of golf balls and softballs. So I duck into a neighbourhood off highway 81 near Duncan. (You know that feeling of oh $hit I think I *ucked up!), yeah well that's how I felt when hail started to fall.(Especially since I needed my truck for a construction job 1500+ miles away!) So I find 2 trees hanging over road and take shelter there. Wow! I got lucky there. ____________________________________________________________________ So I wait for a break in the hailstorm and then I started heading east on Highway 7. I notice 5 storm-chasers in Duncan then 10 more(20 total chasers including amateurs) parked between Duncan and Velma on the highway. So I must be on the right track. Instead of waiting there on the highway with the chasers I head south into the storm. ____________________________________________________________________ After several miles of back-country roads that's when I see it. A tornado lowering into a farmer's field. I drove until I was south of the Tornado. I stopped the truck and almost grabbed my keys out of the ignition.(instinct of not wanting to leave keys in truck, who is going to steal it? a deer?, a cougar?) I left truck running and pointed my truck North towards Tornado got out and took pictures(side-note....in my family it is a tradition to act out a scene from the movie "Twister" when you see a Tornado before taking a picture of Tornado.) ____________________________________________________________________ At first the tornado just kept rotating in the sky not lowering yet trying to. The tornado was heading northeast but it started to wobble south towards me. I kept waiting for whole armada of storm-chasers to show up, but nothing. It was just me, my truck, some horses, and some cows. ____________________________________________________________________ Finally the Tornado lowered and you could see dust and dirt go into the clouds. Then the Tornado wobbled even more south then started picking stuff up. That's when I thought I'd better get out of here & find a better view, not so close! ____________________________________________________________________ I headed east to a dead-end had to turn around and go back west then north. When I got to highway 7, all the storm-chasers were gone. The Tornado had crossed the highway and was headed towards Velma. ____________________________________________________________________ So I headed north then northeast the best I can on back country roads. Then I see a river of water over-taking the road I'm on. A creek was flowing over the road from all the rain dumped out from the storm. I get out of my truck to inspect the road to make sure I wasn't going to drive off into the abyss. Then the winds started picking up blowing northeast or east I think, into the tornado. That was probably 100m.ph. winds that was feeding into the storm! That wasn't even the Tornado and it was rocking my truck and bending all vegetation sending everything my way. ____________________________________________________________________ I turn and look east and take my last set of pictures of the Tornado. I decided not to chase the Tornado and press my luck. Instead I was going to head to the west side of the storm and take pictures of the storm leaving. ____________________________________________________________________ I drive into the river of water flowing out of a field and creek & drove into Duncan and then I see a huge tidal-wave looking clouds stretching as far as the eye can see(North-side of Duncan) It was one the of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life. I have seen it before, I don't know what you call it when the clouds form up into a huge tidal-wave looking thing stretching thousands of miles into the air as if it was about to unload it's fury on the landscape. I didn't even take a picture of it! I think at the time I just wanted to take a look then get back home to see if everybody was ok.(Figuring I would probably see that again.) But nothing, that's it, a huge tidal wave in the sky then sunshine comes back.(For anyone who has never seen those tidal-wave looking clouds, here is a description, think of those 40 or 50ft waves in Hawaii or California multiply that by tens of thousands of feet in the air stretching 20miles to 30 miles long or even longer who knows and it looks like it is going to wipe everything out that comes before it.) I might be looking at the cold front passing through clashing with warm moist air when you see the clouds look like that. ____________________________________________________________________ I went back home and the newscast didn't even mention a tornado touching down! I guess when I saw the Tornado I was miles away from the chasers and the Tornado went a little ways on the ground then lifted up when it aproached the chasers. Then it lowered down again on the other side of the highway way out in the country. ____________________________________________________________________ Damage report: My family was fine my truck got slight hail damage. No people were hurt. Probably some wildlife got taken out by the twister. ____________________________________________________________________ I think 90% of Tornados go undocumented in OKLAHOMA due to the low-population. ____________________________________________________________________ I rate OKLAHOMA #1 in tornadoes. here is my top 3 states in number of tornadoes and violence of the Tornadoes. #1OKLAHOMA #2 Kansas and Texas. ____________________________________________________________________ Oklahoma has the most Tornadoes and has the highest recorded wind-speed on the planet of 318m.p.h.+ ever recorded! Some rate Texas and Florida ahead of OKLAHOMA in numbers on tornadoes. I think because of their population of 20,000,000(twenty-million) to 30,000,000(thirty-million), more tornadoes are spotted. OKLAHOMA and Kansas population is only 2,000,000(two-million)-3,000,000(three- million). The number one rating in combination of Tornados and Hurricanes I would give that to Texas. The #1 rating of Hurricanes alone I would give to Florida.(although I am researching other U.S.A. territories and other places to see if Florida still keeps their #1 hurricane rating.) ____________________________________________________________________ Photo Specs. Black & White grainy. Part of 2 sets of pictures of Tornado lowering twice in Stephens County, OKLAHOMA. On the photo I put down Summer 2004. Technically it was Spring. In the BRASHEARS (FAMILY), if it is warm outside, we call it Summer. photo taken by Jimmy Ray Brashears. In the photo I wanted to show how my G.M. Baby Hummer truck next to a Tornado to show it's toughness. It survived many years of offroading, snowstorms, and Tornados. I name this photo"OKLAHOMA TORNADO vs.my G.M. BABY HUMMER"