OKLAHOMA HIT AGAIN
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OKLAHOMA CITY — Tornadoes rolled in from the prairie and slammed Oklahoma City and its suburbs Friday, killing at least five people and trapping motorists in their vehicles as a storm swept down an interstate highway while commuters tried to beat it home.
The Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office late Friday night reported that a mother and her baby were among the five people killed. Hospitals in the area said dozens more people were hurt, five critically.
Meteorologists who had warned about the dangerous weather front said the storm’s fury didn’t match that of a deadly twister that struck suburban Moore last week. Violent weather also moved through the St. Louis area, ripping the roof off a suburban casino.
Friday’s broad storm hit during the evening rush hour, causing havoc on Interstate 40, a ma-
jor artery connecting suburbs east and west of the city, and dropping so much rain on the area that streets were flooded to a depth of 4 feet.
To the south, a severe storm with winds approaching 80 mph rolled into Moore, where a topof-the-scale EF5 tornado killed 24 people on May 20.
Rick Smith, the warning-coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service at Norman, said that although the storm packed a powerful punch, it wasn’t as strong as the Moore tornado.
“This storm had everything you could handle at one time: tornadoes, hail, lightning, heavy rain, people clogging the highways,” Smith said.
The region was fortunate because the storm touched down mostly in rural areas and missed central Oklahoma City.
“It’s not even close to anything like what we had last week,” Smith said. “We were very concerned this would move into downtown. It would have been a major problem. It made all the difference that it was out in the country.”
Heavy rain and hail hampered rescue efforts in Oklahoma City. Lightning roiled the skies well after the main threat had moved east. Highways and streets were clogged late into the night as motorists worked their way around flooded portions of the city.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Betsy Randolph said troopers found the bodies of a woman and an infant near their vehicle. Randolph said it’s not known if the woman was driving into the storm when it hit around 7 p.m. Friday.
Emergency officials reported numerous injuries in the area along I-40, and Randolph said there were toppled and wrecked cars littering the area. Troopers requested a number of ambulances at I-40 near Yukon, west of Oklahoma City.
“We’re scrambling around,” said Lara O’Leary, a spokeswoman for the local ambulance agency. “There is very low visibility with the heavy rain … so we’re having trouble getting around. The damage is very, very widespread.”
Standing water was several feet deep, and downtown Oklahoma City looked more like a hurricane had gone through than a tornado.
In Missouri, the combination of high water and fallen power lines closed dozen of roads, snarling traffic on highways and side streets in the St. Louis area. At the Hollywood Casino in suburban Maryland Heights, gamblers rushed from the floor as a storm blew out windows and tore off part of the roof.
Rich Gordon of Jefferson City said he was on the casino floor when he heard a “boom.”
“I didn’t know if it was lightning or what, but it was loud,” Gordon said.
In Oklahoma, storm chasers with cameras in their cars transmitted video showing a number of funnels dropping from the supercell thunderstorm as it passed south of El Reno and into Oklahoma City just south of downtown. Police urged motorists to leave I-40 and seek a safe place.
“I’m in a car running from the tornado,” said Amy Sharp, who last week pulled her fourthgrade daughter from the Plaza Towers Elementary School as a storm approached with 210mphwinds. “I’m in Norman, and it just hit Yukon where I was staying” since last week’s storm. “I’m with my children who wanted their mother out of that town,” Sharp said, her voice quivering with emotion.
At Will Rogers World Airport southwest of Oklahoma City, passengers were directed into underground tunnels and inbound and outbound flights were canceled.
Television cameras showed debris falling from the sky and power transformers being knocked out by high winds.
Well before Oklahoma’s first thunderstorms fired up at late afternoon, the Storm Prediction Center in Norman was already forecasting a violent evening. From the Texas line to near Joplin, Mo., residents were told to keep an eye to the sky and an ear out for sirens.
Forecasters warned of a “particularly dangerous situation,” with strong tornadoes and hail the size of grapefruit.
Flash flooding and tornadoes killed three people in Arkansas late Thursday and early Friday. Three others were missing in floods that followed 6 inches of rain in the rugged Ouachita Mountains near Y City, 125 miles west of Little Rock.