Severe storms moved through Oklahoma overnight Sunday and into early Monday, knocking out power for thousands in Woodward, leaving about 400 people without electricity near Harper and forcing the National Weather Service to issue tornado, thunderstorm and flood alerts as the weather system kept building.
The first outages in Woodward were reported close to 11:22 p.m. Sunday, and OG&E said restoration was estimated for close to 5 a.m. Monday morning. The utility said the outages came after severe storms brought several disruptions across the area, with large hail and damaging winds expected and only a slight possibility of isolated tornadoes if the conditions present themselves.
That slight risk did not stop the warnings from stacking up. The National Weather Service had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning in effect until 10:15 p.m. and another until 12 a.m., while severe thunderstorm watches stretched until 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. for several Oklahoma Counties. A Flood Warning for the Chikaskia River near Blackwell also covered Grant County and Kay County, adding another layer to a storm system that was already moving fast enough to keep alerts changing through the night.
The gap between the forecast and the warnings is what made the storm period hard to ignore. A slight chance of isolated tornadoes means the atmosphere has ingredients that could spin up brief tornadoes if the setup becomes just right, but it is not the same as a widespread tornado threat. Early Monday, though, the warnings were issued anyway as the system continued to produce the kind of unstable weather that can turn a passing severe storm into a bigger emergency in a matter of minutes.
News 9 said it would keep updating live radars and post additional storm reports on its News 9 Weather YouTube channel. For people in Woodward, near Harper and along the Chikaskia River, the immediate question was not whether the storm had passed, but how much more it would leave behind before the alerts finally expired and the lights came back on.
