Around 1975 on Juyl 4th, I was camping in Hawthorne Bluff near Oolagah, OK.
Around 7 P.M. I felt a cool breeze and knew something was coming. It had been miserably hot. I spent the next 15 minutes checking on my tent’s stakes, tie downs etc.
Then it hit.
It was the worst thunderstorm I have ever been in. Continuous lightning strikes, heavy winds and rain. It was all I could do to keep the tent up. Although the tent was completely waterproof water was coming in from the wind blowing through the window flaps.
After a couple of hours it was still going. I began to just about go crazy as it just kept going. Finally at nearly midnight it quit.
When I awoke the next morning, every tent in the campground was down except mine. Trees down everywhere, limbs strewn everywhere. I later talked to the ranger and he said: “You mean you stayed in your tent? Everyone else came to the ranger station”.
Correction, that would have been either 1979 or 1980. It was July 4th tho.
I have a crappie mounted on my wall that I caught at Lake Oolagah. I believe that was the same storm that spawned a tornado in Stillwater while I was attending a summer session at OSU. It went right over the dorm and took out part of the roof on a building on campus.