Major disaster in Oklahoma, EF3 Tornado

[Wickerman]

There's a major weather alert for Tulsa, after an EF3 tornado, a mile and a half wide wipes out the town of Moore south of Oklahoma city.

Anyone heard from Tom?

[Archaic]

Another huge tornado struck today and a school has collapsed, killing many little children.

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the first responders... hopefully there will be survival miracles, particularly at the school.

Best regards,
Archaic

PS: I sent Tom an email earlier asking if he was OK but haven't heard back yet.

[Wickerman]

No worries, Tom is in fighting form as usual.
Now we are getting thunderstorms in southern Ontario, left over from the same system that passed through Oklahoma.

[Archaic]

Yep, I heard from Tom a few minutes ago and he's OK.

I can't believe it, but that idiot Jesse Ventura is already on YouTube claiming that the tornado was caused by some kind of gobbledygook conspiracy involving "high frequency energy", oil companies and the government.

What's worse, there are idiots who are believing it, and believing the tornado was caused deliberately to further some kind of political agenda. Like what???

It seems like in America today (and all over the world, for that matter) when there's a terrible human tragedy some people have to respond, not with simple human compassion, but with loud-mouthed callous idiocy.

I'm so tired of it. They're too excited by their own conspiracy theory to even stop and consider the victims.

Best regards,
Archaic

[kensei]

So often, the really bad ones are in Oklahoma. Well, they don't call that part of the country "Tornado Alley" for nothing. Though technically, tornados can happen almost anywhere on Earth. This is a bad one and I'm saddened at the high loss of life, but frankly these storms are so massively violent that I don't understand why they don't kill far more people than they do. They're like meteorological atomic bombs. No wonder that twisters have been called "the finger of God."

I grew up on a farm in Minnesota that was hit by a tornado three years before I was born so I didn't experience it but it was one of my family's biggest stories. It was a multi-tail twister but probably no stronger than an F1 or F2. Destroyed a barn, wiped out a flock of chickens by blowing them up into the trees where they were impaled on the branches, and a dog died later when it bit down on a downed powerline. The only damage to the house where my parents and sister were sheltering was one broken window- the glass from which was found on the opposite side of the house, and it had to make a mid-air turn to get there. I remember my late father talking about how the thing that most mystified him was how he had left his coat hanging across the back of a truck parked between the house and the barn, and after the storm, despite all that furious wind the coat was still there. Actually I think he was lucky the truck was still there.

Jesse Ventura- well, he was briefly the governor of my state. He's quite a character, he's never afraid to speak his mind and my mother (who's still living) loved that about him, how he refused to be a shill for any special interests during his term. I remember how she said she had waited years to vote for one of the candidates he ran against but when she watched the debates he totally made her change her mind and vote for him instead. I guess the two front-runners just hurled insults at each other, and Jesse stood between them and said, "You see? This is why you should vote for me." But I don't want to sound like I'm siding with him. What he's been doing recently with his tv show "Conspiracy Theory" is pretty much all over the place. I think he gets some things right and exposes things that need to be exposed, but other times he is way over the top and hopelessly off the mark. I actually support the criticisms he'd made of the TSA and how he refuses to fly anymore because of them, but if he's saying the tonrnados were artificially created I think he's way off base. I think that in his mind he isn't showing any disrespect to those who have died, and that he is taking into consideration the weather control technology that does exist- cloud seeding and beyond, such as when China recently hosted the Olympics and announced ahead of time that there would be no worries about the weather, and sure enough there weren't. But I agree that he's going too far.

Rest in peace all the victims of this disaster, especially the children.

[Cogidubnus]

Every sympathy to any affected left-pond friends...

All the best

Dave