Pool Party In The Sinkhole!

So, on Tuesday I posted about the storms moving through Oklahoma and how I wasn’t sure how things would turn out. Well, I’m still here, but here’s an update:

I borrowed this picture from someone on Facebook. It’s a funnel that nearly touched down less than half a mile from my house. Sometimes they’ll drop out of the sky and then go right back up again without touching down and destroying anything. Thankfully, that’s what this one did.

In addition to more than a dozen confirmed tornadoes in the last 72 hours, we have had record rainfall this week on waterways that were already quite full, which has led to pretty much every waterway in the area swelling to flood levels.

The baseball fields where Shane played ball for years is 4.5 miles to the South of our house, right on the Arkansas River. This is what it looks like as I’m typing this:

We are safe, for now, and live in a low risk area, but it’s still scary stuff for this desert-dweller who has been transplanted to this place where water falls from the sky at an alarming rate and where the wind comes sweeping down the plains, but sometimes in a circular motion.

Let it never be said, though, that Oklahomans don’t have a sense of humor and they use it often as a way to get through crazy times like this. Here are some of the best things I’ve seen on Facebook in the wake of all this crazy weather:

Of course, people get REALLY creative, as you’ll see in this next series of pictures. With all the rain and flooding, sinkholes have opened up in places. There’s one over on the west side of town that someone decided to create a Facebook “event” for. He decided to create a “pool party” and made it public so people could “accept” invitations.

Needless to say, people got creative and posted pictures for the invite:

Of course, we have to include a Tulsa icon:

In all seriousness, though, keep Oklahoma and our surrounding states in your thoughts. There are quite a few people displaced right now. Some will not have a home to return to and others will have a huge mess to dig out of to make their homes livable again.

Consider making a donation to any of the relief organizations that will be publicized in the coming days and weeks. I won’t post any names or websites here because there’s always somebody who feels the need to comment about why they don’t like “this organization” or “that organization” for whatever reason, and that’s not what this post is about.

Until next time, my friends…stay safe and watch out for each other!