It had been a typical day - I had been working in my darkroom all morning when Georganne called me from Tulsa, asking if I was aware, we were under a Tornado Watch with a very intense storm heading right for us? I answered, "had I known, I would already be outside, camera in hand". 

Making a mad dash, I got our daughter to the inside bathroom tub with a mattress for cover and then stowed some of the lawn chairs, bikes, etc. (missiles) from the front porch. Next, I grabbed my Nikon and JVC video camera and took watch on our front porch (yeah, stupid).

The B&W sequence starts viewing towards the SE, where I could see it getting real gnarly and in real life, it was a lot more intimidating than it looks here. I noticed what I thought was rotation then could see the funnel taking shape. I followed it, panning left while I fired off 3 shots, then grabbed the video camera to capture just a few seconds of the twister before it disappeared in the distance.

When Georganne got home, we called Channel 2 (KJRH Tulsa) and they were very interested in my video as they did not have any footage of this storm. We drove to the station, met with their meteorologist and went into an edit bay to look at my footage. So, after everyone at the station took their turn peering in, they copied it and we drove back home, arriving just in time to see my footage open the 10:00 news.

Anyway, I just happened upon these while cataloging old media - these are all very crappy images - the B&W were scanned from a contact sheet years ago and the color images are via a 35mm film carrier connected to a Polaroid Video-Still device (circa 1989 technology), with the source being a S-VHS tape recorded from the "over the air" broadcast that evening on the news.

I do have the original tape (which I need to digitize) and somewhere, have the original negatives and will scan them directly and re-post when I find them. In the meantime, this is what you shouldn't do - hang out waiting for a tornado to blow you back to Kansas.

The table below is from the NWS, showing the Tornado I shot was the 6th tornado that year in Oklahoma along with the other 3 that occurred that day.

The table below is from the NWS, showing the Tornado I shot was the 6th tornado that year in Oklahoma along with the other 3 that occurred that day.