The storm that moved thru Muldrow, OK

Hello Everyone,

I live in Muldrow, OK and my neighborhood was hit by the storm that moved thru Wednesday night. The local TV station is saying that it was straight line winds in excess of 100 mph. Well, it sounded like a freight train was going right over our house. I think it was a tornado. I'll tell you the whole story.

Since it was Wednesday my 13 year old daughter left on the church van to attend a local church around 7 pm. Around 7:30 or 7:45 pm the tornado sirens went off. My first thought was that she wasn't home and it was going to hit. Well, it started to rain and we watched the news on the TV. I had already brought all of our dogs inside. We decided to just stay at home and wait for the church van to bring my daughter home. We didn't want to be gone looking for her if they were to bring her right back home. We hoped they would just wait it out at the church.

As the storm got closer I cleaned out our hall closet. It was one of only two places in the house without an outside wall. It's also the smallest space. Not even 1 minute after I got the closet cleaned out the lights started to flicker. They did that 3 times. My husband was in our bedroom and I had pulled the curtains back on our French doors so that we could see outside into the back yard. The wind really picked up and then it started to hail hard. Before I could finish the sentence to go to the closet the power went out.

My husband found me in the hallway and we got into the closet. It was so dark we couldn't see anything. We couldn't get any of the dogs to come to us. I had already closed the two bedroom doors that were by the hall closet. I wanted to make sure no glass from the windows would be thrown at us without something else in it's path first. The hail really pounded the house. We have a brick home with siding on the top half where the attic starts.

About 15 seconds after the hail started we heard a loud roar like a freight train coming. We previously had the door to the closet open but my husband quickly closed it. The whole time we were in the closet I just kept repeating, "My baby, my baby." I wasn't sure if the church she was attending was in the path of the tornado or not. After about 10 seconds or so it stopped and got real quiet. We weren't sure if it was okay to come out or not so we waited for about 10 more seconds then opened the door and ventured out.

Our dogs were hiding in the living room and the power was still out. We opened our front door and there was so much hail on the ground it looked like it had snowed! It was about 3 inches deep! We started looking for our matches and emergency candles as well as our flashlight. The rain had stopped but it was still lightening everywhere. We ventured outside to see the damage.

Amazingly enough the windows in our car were intact as well as the sun roof! However, some trees didn't fare as well. We had limbs from the tops of trees in our front yard and half of a tree in our back yard from a tall tree in our neighbor's back yard. The whole top half was broke off and deposited into our back yard.
There was so much hail and the air was so warm that it created a thick fog. You couldn't hardly see it was so thick! We started checking with neighbors to see if everyone was okay. The house down the street had a flatbed trailer you'd pull behind a pickup thrown up onto their house. The power lines were down on the ground laying across the street.

After about 15 - 20 minutes the church van brought my daughter home. She was so scared. She was crying and got so upset we had to give her her inhaler for her asthma. I was relieved that she was home and was okay. She said that they were in the church and that they were safe there but she was still scared. She said that after the loud train-like noise went away they started taking the kids home. My daughter said that while in the van taking kids home they saw two tornadoes on the ground between the lightening strikes. She said the van driver said, "I gotta drive faster."

I have not used the add an image before but I'm going to try to add pictures I took the next day of just the area we live in. If you've seen the news Muldrow had extensive damage and flooding. I hope I can post more than 1 picture but if not I'll try to pick the best one. I may upload the rest to my profile area.