While I was brushing my teeth, I was just casually standing there staring at myself in the mirror. I’m not really sure what caught my eye, but something didn’t look quite right (and I’m the person that’s spent about a combined 5 minutes in the past 10 years in front of the mirror worrying about my personal appearance). A closer look I saw the edges of things in the mirror weren’t as sharp as they usually were, and an even closer look revealed very small, fine vibrations. I figured it was one of those real small aftershocks that would barely register on the seismic sensors, didn’t think much of it, and stepped back and zoned out to finish brushing my teeth.

About 5 or 10 seconds later, you could start to hear this really low pitched growl that sounded very similar to the trains when they come through Norman on a still night (without the whistles of course). You knew that something was not right at all, but you couldn’t really put a finger on it. That’s when the main quake hit, which registered a 5.6 on the Richter Scale. It definitely caught me off guard, and I would have gone ass over tea kettle had it not been for the nice wall behind me to catch my fall. At that same instant, you start going through the thought process of all those earthquake safety videos you’ve seen many times, but shrugged off, knowing you would never need them.

I ended up going back out into the living room, toothbrush still in mouth, and stood in an open area right by the front door. My thought process was that nothing could fall on me there except for the house, and I had an easy escape route if things really went south. Looking back, I’m not really sure how well that would have worked, but hey, a man can dream.

The quake shook for about 30 seconds, which felt like 30 years. You could hear all the dishes and glasses rattling around in the kitchen cabinets. I was ready for my tropical plants to fall over and make a big mess all over the living room carpet. I was ready to start hearing windows and drywall breaking. I was ready for my two ceiling fans to come crashing down. But thankfully none of that happened. I went back and finished brushing my teeth and then climbed into bed, but it took me between 2 and 3 hours before I finally nodded off for the night.

So I guess the lesson that I took away from this is that those natural disaster safety tips you should definitely listen to, even though you want to dismiss them just like those airplane safety lectures. If there’s anything we’ve learned in 2011, natural disasters can strike unexpectedly in places that don’t normally have them. Take for example an EF-3 tornado in Massachusetts (June 1st), a hurricane in New York (late August), flooding in the Northeast (September), and now earthquakes in Oklahoma. After going through the 5.6 earthquake here in Oklahoma, I can’t even begin to fathom what it would be like being in the big quakes like they’ve had in Japan and Haiti. I’ll take my chances with an EF-5 tornado over that any day.

The post A Few Thoughts on my First Earthquake Experience appeared first on Matthew Gove Blog.

I had identified two possible target areas on Monday morning. One was along the I-40 corridor near Weatherford, and the other was just to the north and west of the I-44 corridor between Lawton and Chickasha. I was in class most of the day, so I wasn’t able to leave Norman until about 2:30 PM. I wanted to get down near Snyder, but that was pretty unfeasable to get down there and see anything before dark. So I opted to play further north, gambling that there would still be discrete supercell producing tornadoes once they got north.

I chose to head west on I-40 to start, which would leave me with the most options (there were also some grumblings about storms possibly firing north of I-40). The plan was then to surge south when things started looking good. There were two supercells on the menu to choose from. One was east of Hobart, headed for the Weatherford area, and the other one was northeast of Snyder, and already had at least 2 confirmed tornadoes on it. The Hobart storm seemed to be blossoming as I was leaving Oklahoma City, so I opted to continue west to try and intercept it near Weatherford.

I got off I-40 in Hinton, Oklahoma, about 20 miles east of Weatherford, between the 2 supercells, which were both Tornado-Warned at the time. I sat in the back of a parking lot of a casino watching both cells and taking some pictures, but then realized that these storms were moving a lot slower than I originally thought. It was time to pick one and attack it.

I went back and forth trying to decide which storm to pick, but the eastern storm that had produced the Snyder and Tipton tornadoes seemed to get a second life, so I chose that one. I needed to get south, but didn’t want to punch the core, so I doubled back and headed east on I-40 then blasted south right along the eastern edge of it. The storm seemed to be headed towards Anadarko, so I set that as my target. It seemed like an eternity to get down there (the storm was over a pretty big road hole), but I rolled into Anadarko shortly after another wedge tornado was reported on the ground near Fort Cobb. By now, though, it was after 5:00 and we were losing daylight fast.

With a race against the clock before the sun set, I turned north and surged out in front of the hook. Looking back at the core, you could tell something was in there, but you couldn’t tell if it was indeed the tornado you were looking at or whether it was rain wrapping around the tornado. Either way, I was within 2 miles of the twister, so it was enough for me to chalk it up as at least one last tornado tally for 2011 (I had a couple earlier in the year in Florida). I heard the Tornado Warning expire from just southeast of the base as we neared total darkness and began the very satisfying drive back to Norman. I was greeted by another 4.7 magnitude earthquake shortly after arriving home, putting the experience of November 7th into a class by itself.

The post Oklageddon and the Quakenado appeared first on Matthew Gove Blog.