Grass has grown back to heal the dreadful scar left by the monster. Fluffy white clouds built in a blue Oklahoma sky and when peoples' voices quieted, the air was filled with bird song. In Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota severe thunderstorms developed and there was even a tornado warning. But all was peaceful in El Reno.
I imagine today must be a hard day for the families. In particular, I think of Kathy Samaras, who in one awful moment lost both her husband and son. Grief is such an odd, crooked road. It starts out like a muddy bog, pulling the shoes from your feet, slowing the wheels of your progress to a painful crawl. When things become ever so slightly less terrible, you hardly notice because things are still terrible enough. And then there is the first time you laugh, and you are stunned into momentary silence at the shock of the sound you've just made, a sound you never expected to make again. Then tears are likely to follow, for laughter and tears are not as far apart as you might think. There are little moments of peace from time to time, resting places where you find a little space apart from the struggle. And there may even be an unexpected island of refuge where you think, at last I am free of this burden I've been carrying. But it is only a way station, and you find yourself back on that road, more often than not trudging along on ground you thought you had already covered.
It is like that, grief. Capricious and tricky, and lingering as the days and weeks and months pass by. It is a very long journey made entirely on foot, walked one slow step at a time.
I hope Kathy has found at least some moments of peace, some resting places where the pain leaves her alone for awhile. I hope she will find her way to an island of unexpected relief and solace.
The El Reno tornado was made much more real for me because I happened
to drive through part of its damage path while on my trip to bring KD home last June. When I looked at this graphic, which shows the path of the tornado including the portion where it tracked east directly down I40, I felt a chill. I could then put together the damage I'd seen as I drove west with the actual progress and life cycle of the tornado. Where the damage path tapers and ends is probably about where I saw that first tree, broken off and dangling midway up its trunk. The widening of the path as you follow it backwards corresponds to the increasing numbers of twisted trees, the horribly mangled billboard I will never forget, the chewed up buildings and the appalling sight of a culvert full of trees that looked like they'd been attacked by a giant dull-bladed lawnmower, or a wood chipper from hell. Most of all I shiver at the realization that I was driving west back along the very path of death and destruction that had occurred less than 3 weeks before.
The El Reno event has been meticulously analyzed. A great many pictures and a lot of video footage was shot of it. There have been a lot of discussions about it, dissecting the storm as well as the behavior and choices of the chasers who were tracking it, and the controversy over the NWS decision to rate it at an EF3 rather than the more accurate EF5 that was documented by radar observed wind speeds. Quite a number of chasers were caught by this tornado, many of them experienced professionals in the field. Some were injured severely, a number barely escaped with their lives. Rather than heap blame for real or perceived errors in judgement, I prefer to cheer the successful escape of those that survived and celebrate the lives lived fully until the last moment for those who did not.
Among the best videos I've seen of this event are this one by Pecos Hank, storm chaser, snake wrangler, wildlife expert, musician and my new heart throb. Hank is a real renaissance man. He's been described as part storm chaser, part Crocodile Hunter. His storm photography is breathtaking, and his videos are beautifully shot and edited, so that they become not just entertaining clips of tornadoes, but lyrical, meditative tone poems on the skies and vast canvas of the great plains. This piece, part sobering documentary, part art, is probably my favorite of all the available footage on the El Reno event. He recognizes right away that this is a rare monster. "People are gonna' die today," he says grimly, in an unfortunately accurate prediction.
As a bonus, check out this music video by Hank's band, the Southern Backtones, performing "Forever" at the Foodarama. It manages to be at once surreal, hilarious, despairing and ultimately triumphantly euphoric. There are a lot of other goodies on Hank's beautifully crafted website. I give it five trees.
And then there is this, the full chase of the El Reno tornado by Australian chaser and storm spotter Daniel Shaw. Daniel regularly streams his chases live (you can find his site with live streaming link here) during his weeks spent in the U.S. during tornado season. The rest of the time he is in Australia, looking for Aussie twisters and any other weather events he can find.
This piece is particularly compelling because it captures not only some of the best footage of the often elusive tornado circulation itself, but also the stress, tension, and terror of the event. Daniel is not just a chaser out looking for great shots, he is a trained spotter and licensed ham radio operator who performs a valuable service as part of the Spotter Network. Watching him dodge the beast while calling in reports and listening to the spotter radio chatter is a lot like watching a horror movie where you can see the monster that is stalking the unsuspecting victim. As a viewer equipped with knowledge of this tornado's particularly unpredictable behavior coupled with its epic size and violent wind speeds, you find yourself wanting to yell at Daniel to get out of there, as if it were a masked Michael Myers closing in on Jamie Lee Curtis.
Normally a charming, voluble, enthusiastic solo chaser who constantly chatters at his viewers and seems to Never. Stop. Talking, during this event he telegraphs quite clearly the stress of being on the front lines of tracking a deadly twister. The money quote for me was when the Baron Mobile Threat application he uses gives out its audible warning of "You are approaching a twisting storm. Please exercise caution," and Daniel answers it with a muttered "No shit."
And finally, perhaps the most terrifying of them all is Dan Robinson's literal brush with death as he finds himself unknowingly caught in the outer circulation of the tornado and only realizes what is happening when it is too late. Dan is believed to be the last person to have seen Tim, Paul and Carl alive. He was only seconds and a few hundred yards ahead of them when they were killed. He was very lucky to have survived, and still deals with the traumatic emotional aftermath. Dan provided detailed information which helped piece together much of what happened on that awful day. Ultimately this information may serve to help others avoid getting trapped the same way, and is part of the larger body of data and experience that is slowly building our ability to understand these events and thereby save lives.
To quote Daniel Shaw after he observed a moment of silence for Tim, Paul and Carl while driving across the plains on his live streamed chase today, "May their dear souls rest in peace."
