Word: skies
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...alto-cumulus clouds begin to cast shadows across the truck stops and red-dirt farm lands of western Oklahoma. Moore and his aide, Bill Moyer, another O.U. meteorology student, keep peering at the sky, noting the cloud peaks tilting to the southeast, indicating that jet-stream winds are active. "That's good," Moore notes, "real good." Two essential ingredients for a tornadic storm seem to be present, and just as surely moving inexorably toward a showdown. If the cold, swift-moving jet-stream wind persists and clashes with the warm, moist lower air from the south, the atmosphere will...
...They're going crazy back there." He floors the accelerator, heading for the tornado's path, so he can get pictures. At 4:09 p.m., the first heavy drops splatter on the windshield, washing away the dead insects. A jumble of blue gray shapes rushes across the sky. Soon chilly blasts of air shake the truck. A windmill in a nearby field whirs crazily. "It's only a matter of time before we get hail," says Moore...
...about 20 miles west of Enid (pop. 52,700). Moore spins his wheels, and the chase is on again. In Fairview, 30 miles west of Enid, several pickup trucks are parked along the road. Next to them, lanky farmers in caps and blue jeans stare at the turbulent, darkening sky. Women carrying grocery bags peer from the doorway of the IGA market. A handful of motorists watch from the refuge of an APCO gas station down the street...
...Enid, tornado sirens begin to shriek with an otherworldly howl. The sky is now black as night. Only a dim outline of the horizon betrays the threatening shape of the cloud formations. Several cars fish tail dangerously down the flooded streets. From the radio an announcer yells: "Take shelter! Get downstairs!" He adds that a tornado has just destroyed mobile homes west of town...
...through wishing." Son Sean, 3, is "beautiful," their plants are healthy, the cats are "purring." Lest anyone be hurt by the very private life they have been leading, they aver that their "silence is a silence of love and not of indifference. Remember, we are writing in the sky instead of on paper-that's our song...