Rolling Thunder Tornadoes

Severe weather been forecast for ten days now to hit this afternoon. At 6 PM I went to the Woods SW Gate. Right on schedule, the storm was coming in. As I walked into the warm, still Woods the rolling, continuous thunder in the north was like a distant battle sweeping my way. It was a tornado on the ground in Moore crossing I-35 at 6:30. In the Woods, animals were preternaturally quiet. Three crows flew away. I watched a stream of ants ascending a dead elm and wondered if they were preparing for their subterranean home to be flooded. Many of the trees in the Woods are right on the cusp of breaking buds, but most have not done so. It is really only the flowering Mexican plums and the elms. Some of the elms are beginning to drop their mature green samara seeds. The cottonwoods buds are all as swollen as they can be, without opening. Oaks, walnuts, pecans, willows, sugar berry, catalpa, green ash, rusty haw, coffee trees, persimmons, chittamwood, soap berries, are all still quiet.. no sign of any bud development.  After a quick half hour loop through to the NE Tree Trail and back, the wind began to rise with rushing cool air flooding south. I paused under a large bur oak snag #47 and looked up to see a turkey in the branches..but only for a moment as the dead branches of an elm snag crashed into the oaks and sent the turkey flying east. I returned to the SW Gate and watched the sky as the storm came in.