'We take it serious now'

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Portales’ Elly Marez knew a storm was coming when she started home from Lubbock. She could see the dark clouds ahead well before the heavy rain and hail began that evening of March 23, 2007.

File photo

A mobile home on Hickory Street is leveled during the 2007 tornado in Clovis. Nobody was reported injured in relation to the house. The tornado resulted in the deaths of two Clovis residents.

“My daughter was driving, and probably 10 minutes before we got to Farwell, she could not see the road anymore because of the rain and it was pitch black,” Marez said.

“She pulled off to what she thought was the side of the road, and we sat there for a few minutes.”

The roaring storm seemed only to strengthen, and the four people crammed into her 2003 Dodge Neon were all terrified.

“We’re screaming at each other,” Marez said, “and then we felt the vehicle lift up off the ground and moved, probably, I don’t know, 18 feet toward a field. I just knew we were going to be sucked up into it. I thought we were going to go up into the sky just like in the movies.”

Marez, her two daughters and a son-in-law fell instantly silent.

“Then, whatever it was, just set us back down — gentle, like a giant had picked us up and set us back down. I think we all peed our pants,” she said.

Eastern New Mexico residents are not used to tornadoes the magnitude of those that hit the region nine years ago.

Curry and Roosevelt counties average less than two twisters per year, and most of those form and dissipate over empty farmland, never damaging a fence post.

But because of the 2007 storm that left two dead, injured more than 30, killed dozens of livestock, and destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes and businesses in the area, residents pay close attention to the skies this time of year.

“We take it serious now, I tell you,” Marez said.

Weather records show most tornadoes in this part of the country — about 70 percent — occur in May and June.

Between television meteorologists, radio warnings, newspaper websites, multiple phone apps and city warning sirens, most people have ample opportunity to take cover from tornadoes, at least when they’re home.

But motorists can be helpless when caught by surprise.

“A vehicle is pretty much a death trap,” said Dan Heerding, the emergency management coordinator for the city of Clovis.

“If you’re caught in an open area on the highway, you probably need to get out of the vehicle and get in a ditch.”

There are a few other options:

“The average speed needed to outrun a tornado is 70 mph in your vehicle,” Heerding said.

“I’m not saying it’s a good idea; sometimes you have to make a judgment call in how you respond.”

Marez, now 52, never saw what she believes was one of at least six confirmed tornadoes in the area that night she still references as “the worst night of my life.” She’s sure something lifted her car into a field of mud that took the family hours to escape.

“We never saw anything,” she said.

“It’s even scarier when you can’t see it.”