Oklahoma town hitted by second tornado in two months

The residents of Oklahoma Town are no strangers to the destructive power of tornadoes. Just two months after being ravaged by a powerful twister, the town was once again hit by another devastating storm. The second tornado brought with it destruction and chaos, leaving many homes and businesses in ruins.

As the community struggles to pick up the pieces and rebuild once again, questions arise about the frequency and intensity of these natural disasters. Is this a sign of climate change? Are we entering a new era of more frequent and severe storms?

The National Weather Service reported that Barnsdall, a town of about 1,000 people located a 40-minute drive north of Tulsa, was leveled shortly after 9:30 p.m. A storm survey team found damage Tuesday that is consistent with at least an EF-4 strength tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. It was the second tornado to hit the town in five weeks.

As the tornado came through, the cellar door blew open and began to fill with water up to her ankles. Insulation began blowing around her.

The storms began earlier Monday with gusty winds and rain. But after dark, tornadoes were spotted skirting northern Oklahoma. At one point in the evening, a storm in the small town of Covington had "produced tornadoes off and on for over an hour," the National Weather Service said. Throughout the area, wind farm turbines spun rapidly in the wind and blinding rain.

Elsewhere in the Southern Plains, Monday’s widely anticipated severe weather caused less destruction than feared. The extreme instability and strong wind shear were in place as expected, but most of the severe thunderstorms developed in a broken line stretching from eastern Kansas into Oklahoma, rather than as separate supercell storms. That line-based structure limited the storms’ ability to form intense tornadic circulations. In fact, the Barnsdall tornado emerged from one of the day’s few intense storms that formed well ahead of the line, merging with the line only after the tornado struck (see radar loop in embedded post from Jon Erdman below).

The winds were being created by a low pressure system north of Colorado that was also pulling up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, fueling the risk of severe weather on the Plains, according to the National Weather Service's Denver-area office.

Meanwhile, floodwaters in the Houston area began receding Monday after days of heavy rain in southeastern Texas left neighborhoods flooded and led to hundreds of high-water rescues. 

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Sarah H

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