I was sitting at home watching tv and saw some lightning so I decided to go and check the radar. At first it was nothing too impressive, just a cell located a few miles to the north of Norman. I waited for one more scan and saw that the storm started wrapping up rapidly and I looked out my window and saw a funnel cloud almost right above my apartment! I didn’t have a good view from my apartment so I hopped in the car and headed east on Hwy. 9 trying to get a clear view of the funnel.
Along the way I picked up Charles and our pursuit to catch the Norman tornado on film began. I have never seen highway 9 as packed as it was that night, it was quite a scene. Cars were pulled over on the side of road for as far as the eye could see, a funnel cloud was visible just one mile east of my apartment, and no tornado sirens. The one time Norman actually needs to set off the sirens they weren’t going off. After the storm had completely passed through Norman the sirens went off, but it was too late, the damage had already been done. We never got to see the tornado, but we had heard that one touched down so we went to investigate.
A house was missing half of its roof, the two car garage door was ripped right off the house and laying in the driveway, while the other garage door didn’t fare much better (pictured below). Wooden fences throughout the entire neighborhood were knocked over and a few small trees were snapped, but this house definitely got hit the hardest. This tornado was rated an EF-1 and was the first tornado to touch down within the city limits of Norman since 1992. I only ended up driving 15 miles in about an hours time.
What we saw:
Severe Storms – 1
Tor-warned Storms – 1
Tornadoes – 0
