How NOT to wake up

Just had ~50mph winds and a short, but severe thun­der­storm in south Tulsa. Rain sounded like rocks being thrown against door/windows.

For about 4 min­utes, I was bar­ri­cad­ing my door and check­ing the win­dows for dam­age. My apart­ment was shak­ing from the wind/pressure change(s). There was so much noise I could not hon­estly tell if my doors and win­dows had already been bro­ken or not. I was reach­ing for my storm chaser bag and try­ing to wake up and fig­ure out what was going on.

(While half asleep) I couldn’t fig­ure out how on earth NWS/NOAA hadn’t sent any alerts or woke me up with alarms if a storm this big was com­ing in. Then I saw the ‘specks’ on the radar. Specks of 70mph down­bursts and heavy rain. The rain had all but stopped about 10 sec­onds before a severe thun­der­storm warn­ing was issued and all the bells/whistles told me of the danger.

Yeah, thanks for the heads up, NWS.