Oklahoma = OklaHOME {Tornados Suck}

    In case you haven't heard we have had what some might call...a touch of bad weather!  Tornados are a way of life in Oklahoma and most everyone who has lived here for any amount of time has been through one. Most have a plan, and most know what to do and are smart about their plan but nothing can prepare someone for an F5 tornado. Brick homes, wood homes, apartment complexes, none of that matters. You are trained and raised to take cover in the center of your house, a hallway, bathroom/bathtub, or an inner closet but none of that matters with an F5. The meteorologists here say it best "if you are not underground when it hits you are dead" it's scary!

    Weather is crazy in Oklahoma! It changes like the wind. It can be blazing hot and within a few hours or a days time it will be freezing cold! There is one thing that everyone around here knows; it's that a quiet, muggy, clear looking morning you know is going to drop tornados by afternoon. That was what it was like on Sunday. The first tornado dropped in Edmond, OK where I work at a Hospital. Since the storms were not headed for our little town of Shawnee (about 45 min away from Edmond) when the hospital called for help I went! I got all the way to the ER and was told "nevermind, we don't need you!" So I got back in the car and headed home. On my way I got calls asking where I was, the storm shifted and Shawnee was in the path. As I got closer I got the call from my wife that her and the boys were in the storm shelter underground but as I tried to keep the car on the road and talk to Samantha I looked out my window to see..... Well have a look:

   

Yeah, I know I shouldn't be trying to out run a tornado while hanging my arm over the seat to snap a photo with my phone! I'm a photographer! Sorry!

   

We were missed by less than a mile! So many others were not and as I'm sure you now know by now the next day had even worse in store for our friends & neighbors just about 30 or so miles down the road in Moore, Ok.  Moore was his by an F5 and is just gone in some areas. I mean that as literal as it sounds...it's gone! Below is a pic of right before the storm hit and then the same picture right after. People have trouble even knowing where their house was because nothing is recognizable. 

   Death and destruction through it all people are coming together. Money, clothes, water, diapers, anything! People are really showing out for one another through all of this! If you feel that you can please give to the Red Cross at http://www.redcross.org. They were amazing to my family after our fire and are being amazing to the entire state now. What is going on in Oklahoma is the one saddest things you have ever seen combined with the most hopeful, proudest, and awe inspiring things you've ever seen all at once!

Here are a few photos I snapped from down the road from our house yesterday;