Tornadoes destroyed homes, overturned vehicles and stripped the bark from trees as they churned across Oklahoma, part of a strong series of storms that hit the plains.
At least two people died on Monday in weather so violent that forecasters declared a “tornado emergency” for communities in the path of one of the twisters.
“You are in a life-threatening situation,” forecasters said while warning the communities of Roff, population 725, and Hickory, population 71, which were ultimately spared major damage. “Flying debris will be deadly to those caught without shelter.”
Photo: AFP / Handout / Josh Edelson
Dana Lance was driving through the Pontotoc County community of Roff on her way home from work on Monday when the skies grew ominous, sirens wailed and forecasters on the radio told people to take cover.
“I parked and went into the school, which has a safe room,” Lance said. “There were kids and elderly people, dogs and cats, babies. It was like the whole town was there.”
In nearby Murray County, where Hickory is located, emergency management director Gary Ligon said one person was injured.
Photo: AP / Nate Billings / The Oklahoman
Garvin County officials said a man believed to be in his upper 70s died when another tornado hit a home near Wynnewood, south of Oklahoma City. That storm, caught on video by several storm chasers, appeared white against the dark clouds of a supercell storm.
In Johnston County, the sheriff’s office said a man was killed by a tornado near Connerville.
The Oklahoma Office of Emergency Management reported the storms destroyed a radio station building in Coal County and an undetermined number of homes in Murray, Garvin and Johnston counties.
The bad weather was expected to settle yesterday in the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, forecasters said, while another storm system should bring storms to the area from north Texas to near St. Louis today.
In Hugo, near the Red River, Charles Webb on Monday piled one of his dogs and one of his cats in the laundry room and hunkered down as the storm came over his house, clipping trees and spinning up debris. Webb said he emerged from his home minutes later to see blue skies.
``We’re real lucky, but we’ve been lucky for a lot of years, fortunately,’’ Webb said Monday.
In the rolling hills between Oklahoma City and Dallas, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol closed Interstate 35 near Wynnewood for 15 minutes on Monday so the storm could pass.
Jessica Randolph, a cashier at the Love’s Travel Stop in Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma, said the tornado came so close that managers ordered employees and customers to take shelter.
“They put us in the showers,” Randolph said. “I drove in when all of that was going on. All we had was pea-sized hail.”
Randolph said she has seen severe weather before and was not frightened by the experience.
“Not for me. I’m used to it,” she said.
Sandy Weyers, director of the Cass County Emergency Management office, said a homeowner did not make it inside by the time the tornado arrived so he grabbed onto a tree and “rode it out.”
Weyers said the man suffered only cuts and scrapes, while the home was a total loss after the roof
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema