OT:Weather--Still Alive and Kicking in Tornado Alley (LONG)

---

 

First, my apologies for posting to multiple-addressees (I've never tried this before -- hope I don't blow up something, like one of the servers!).  With one national convention down, and another 6 only weeks away, my time is at a premium.  And this is an edited reprint of a private posting I just did to some daylily/iris friends and some family members who had tried to call here or e-mailed me, seeing if my Mom (Miss Kitty) and I survived the killer tornadoes from last week.  I thought some of you might be interested in reading this, from the perspective of a convention worker and tour gardener.  Some could probably care less (that's what "delete" buttons are for <G>).   There will be some negatives in this post, but please bear with me.  Some of you thinking about hosting a national (or big regional) convention may find some of my ramblings at least entertaining....

 

I've read very positive things regarding the national iris convention just hosted, and I say "thank you" to those you so warmly shared your experiences and appreciation.

 

So, how was *hosting* a national convention?  We (the Sooner State Iris Society) did it in '88.  I'm sure there were problems, long forgotten -- any big convention is going to have its share of glitches.  But I swear *this* one was jinxed!

 

--Some bus problems "behind the scenes" which we don't care to publicize, and I won't here either.  They should have never happened.

 

--2 key workers dying during the planning stages of the convention (yes, folks do die, but the loss of these two wonderful ladies, both from a psychological point of view and the amount of service they had done for the convention, was especially painful):  Bea Leach and (just a couple of weeks before the convention), Ruth Simmons (immediate past editor of TBIS's Tall-Talk, new AIS national secretary).  We dedicated our convention to these two blessed souls.

 

--I was in charge of the bus routes, and in spite of all the fine-tuning, personally driving every route, and giving both the bus captain *and* bus driver for every bus a copy of each route and schedule, we had more than one bus captain get so lost you'd swear they had just arrived from Planet Pluto.  Most of the persons being shuttled off onto the "scenic tour" took it all in great stride.  But for the tour gardener, having slaved for 2 long years and spent unmentionable amounts of money trying to gussy up a garden for that day of tours, having a busload of folks show up 35 minutes late (with a 50-minute allotment of time for the garden) was disheartening and downright unfair.

 

--The disastrous heatwave of the summer of '98, when we had *over* 50 days in excess of 100 degrees F.  I'm still amazed at the resilience of the gardens (and most of the plants), and am still awed at just how well a garden can bounce back after such trauma.  However, nearly every new daylily I bought/traded for/agreed to guest in Spring '98 succumbed to the heat.  They simply didn't get root systems reestablished in time before the heat moved in and stayed -- over $2000 worth of plants lost (and at least that much value of those which I had traded for).  Ouch.

 

--I nearly managed to get myself killed in a serious car wreck in August 1998, where my little red mid-life crisis Miata convertible wound up being the "meat" in a sandwich whose "bread" consisted of two 1-ton trucks at dawn one morning.

 

--Six weeks later, I shattered my right wrist in a goofy slip-and-fall in a mud puddle in my own driveway, requiring emergency surgery that night and 6 pins drilled into my arm and wrist, trying to pull it all back together.  I typed the majority of a 35-page catalog and a 150-page convention booklet with one hand (the "wrong" hand, BTW, I'm righthanded).

 

--All our convention plans were done based on the historical average of previous iris conventions in Oklahoma (Tulsa in '80, OKC in '88).  We projected 800-1000 conventioneers, planning the banquets, lunches, and bus routes accordingly.  For whatever reason, only 500 registered.  (Only!?  Plenty for me.  And I sure enjoyed the folks who did come.  But I did wind up revamping the bus routes no less than 4 times to adjust for the "smaller" crowd).  Someone on Iris-Talk was wondering why we had the awards banquet in a different hotel.  Had we had the "usual" 800 registrants, the convention hotel would not be able to accommodate them all in an awards banquet setting.

 

--And then of course, that which made all the statements above so very trivial:  The killer tornado that ruined and disrupted the lives of so many families in central Oklahoma (and other parts of the state too, even though you don't see as much on the news about them).  And this is the main reason for this very lengthy post.

 

The tornadoes were incredible, unbelievable.  Seeing the devastation on television is just not the same as seeing it for real.  Most of us have surely seen tornado damage before, in person, or hurricane or earthquake damage.  But I swear, folks, it looked like they had had an A-bomb dropped on them.  We had plenty of advance warning -- we have some of the best radar, and best weatherpersons in the United States.  Otherwise, instead of 43 deaths (and still going up, unfortunately), the toll would have literally been in the thousands!  Driving home from work, I already knew there were problems, so I had switched over from my FM classical station to an AM station which was doing live simulcast with our most famous weatherman, Gary England.  Upon my arrival, I found Miss Kitty standing in my driveway, watching the clouds.  She has a storm cellar at her home, 5 miles south in the town of Blanchard, but it had water it in, so she came out to "weather the storm" with me.

 

Sure enough, at 6:45, the electricty and phones went out (I had no power the rest of the night).  Fool that I am, I didn't even have a portable radio in the house, so I turned the radio in the car back on.  After all that work -- Kitty and I have (nearly) killed ourselves, trying to turn this raw piece of land into a convention garden (two convention gardens, eh?) in 2 short years.  Peak iris bloom.  Best bloom I've had in the last 5 years of irising.  My first home (after all these years of living in apartments and/or spunging off Miss Kitty!).  The piece of property I've always dreamed of owning.  Soon, apparently, to be a thing of the past.

 

Finally, when it hit Bridge Creek (an unincorporated hamlet 5 miles northwest of me, where ultimately we had 11 deaths), I could tell it was going to miss me.  Sure enough, it swept through about 3 or 4 miles north of me.  The convention buses got to see the spot where it crossed over Highway 76 (my highway) north of me.  At the point it crossed there, it was only (!) 1/4 mile wide.  But it was so powerful it had literally *sucked the grass up* -- and to the east, where there had been a substantial grove of trees -- barren.  Thanks to very sophisticated Doppler radar equipment, the weather-experts now say that, at the point it passed through Bridge Creek/Newcastle, it was the strongest recorded tornado in the history of the world!  318 miles per hour.  Lovely -- TWO days before our national convention!

 

One of the tour gardens, Sharon Beasley, is only 5 miles north of me.  I just knew she -- and the little church she and I both attend, one mile further north from her -- were *history*.  Phones were out and the roads blocked.  So I didn't find out until the next day that both had been spared.  It passed *one mile* south of her!  Like me, amazingly, she had absolutely no damage.  As a matter of fact, the night of the tornado, I didn't even have any wind.  Perfectly calm here (which in and of itself was an eerie feeling, knowing what was going on so close).

 

BTW, the spot where the tornado crossed my highway was just about 100' south of where I nearly got myself killed last August in the car wreck.

 

Whew!  What a year.  What a week.  I'll truly never forget Convention Week in Oklahoma!  Coming so close to something so very powerful really put a *lot* of things in perspective for me.  Makes a lot of the petty whining in the first part of this post pretty insignificant, I'd say.

 

Thanks for listening.  I've written this message more as a catharsis for me than information to you.  Daylily-folks, don't let the weather we had "scare you off".  As my buddy, Charlie Suggs, a few miles to the east of me (Norman, OK) posted a few nights ago, in all his 50-something years of living in Oklahoma, he has never seen one "in person".  Y'all come.  Early scapes are coming on.  At the rate we're going, I'll bet we'll be right at peak for the convention in mid-June.

 

If any of you ordered spring daylilies from me and are patiently (or impatiently) awaiting their delivery, I *promise* I'm digging orders tomorrow.  We had heavy rains on the two weekends in April I had planned on digging, and then, well, you know what-all has happened since!  Thanks for your understanding.

 

Best wishes from Tornado Alley,

Perry Dyer

Blanchard, OK