In our prayers

photo from the weather channel)
Sigh...when we lived in Oklahoma, we would have to run to the neighbor's shelter several times a year...one problem is that when you live in rural areas, the tornado might hit before it gets announced that it's coming...we often had to rely on the weather maps, not the announcements....the joke is that if you see someone outside in a thunderstorm, he's probably from Oklahoma.

But the really deadly ones hit during the night.

And although the UK press always mock Americans, I was aghast at one UK news report yesterday where a lot of the comments asked why they didn't build better houses or put shutters on the windows, completely clueless to the power of an F4 or F5 storm..


Ironically, I've also been through tornadoes in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, the difference that all these were smaller tornadoes (F1 or F2) which caused minimal damage compared to the ones that hit us nearby in Oklahoma.

F4	Devastating tornado	207-260 mph	Well-constructed houses leveled; structures with weak foundations blown off some distance; cars thrown and large missiles generated.