Severe Thunderstorms Tear Through Oklahoma, Leaving 4 Dead
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 8, 2012
NOWATA, Okla. (AP) — Four people, including a young child, were killed when strong winds accompanying severe thunderstorms blew through northeastern Oklahoma on Friday, the authorities said.
Two adults and a child were killed when straight-line winds destroyed a mobile home in Nowata County, along Oklahoma’s border with Kansas, Undersheriff Doug Sonenberg told KSWO-TV. They were found in a creek. Their names were not immediately released.
Farther east, near Afton in Ottawa County, straight-line winds flipped a tractor-trailer onto a dividing barrier, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported. The driver, Jimmy King, 70, of Ash Grove, Mo., was trapped inside the rig for nearly three hours and died at the scene.
The storms were a result of a weather system and a cold front colliding with triple-digit temperatures. Wind gusts topping 70 miles per hour were reported at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City.
Damage to some roofs and a garage was also reported in Nowata County, and trees and power lines were down in the Oklahoma City area. The winds and storms left more than 18,100 customers without power in western, central and northeastern Oklahoma.
The heavy winds propelled grass fires across the state, and Undersheriff Lou Ann Brown of Osage County told The Tulsa World that four people had to be evacuated. Crews were able to slow most of the fires, and rainfall was expected to help the efforts, Undersheriff Brown said.
In just an hour at Tulsa International Airport, the temperature dropped from 101 degrees to 78 degrees.
Marianne McGovern, a legal assistant, said the winds caused her office building in downtown Tulsa to sway on Friday afternoon.
“You sit here and you feel like you’re on a ship kind of,” she said. “Everybody was coming out in the hall saying, ‘Did you feel that?’ ”
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