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OU vs. Chattanooga

The Daily's Tyler Metcalfe was at the OU football game Saturday, Aug. 30. The Sooners won 57-2.

More than 80,000 Sooner fans at a sold-out football game were forced to seek shelter in the concourse of Oklahoma Memorial Stadium when a severe thunderstorm sent heavy rain and frequent lightning into Norman Saturday evening.

The Sooners' season opener against Chattanooga was delayed for 72 minutes while lightning flashed and torrential rain poured, drenching field and fans alike.

As the halftime clock wound down, officials announced that halftime would be extended due to severe weather in the area and advised fans to move to the concourse. Within minutes, heavy rain began falling on fans still leaving the seating area. Thousands of people crowded into the concourse. Others headed toward their homes and cars amid frequent lightning and heavy rain.

"People were running across the street in front of cars when [the cars] had a green light," Courtney Oullette, sociology junior, said. "There was a lot of panic, running for any building they could find."

Intense rainfall, lightning and thunder sent fans who had already begun leaving the blowout game scrambling for cover under awnings and inside campus buildings.

"It was some sort of shape-shifting rain that turned everyone into screaming little girls," said Ian Phillips, mechanical engineering senior.

Phillips and his friends waited out the storm in the east concourse of the stadium, wearing trash bags they had found to cover themselves.

The rain slowed down the game but didn't appear to have dampened Sooner fans' spirits. Cheers of "Boomer Sooner" echoed through the concourse as spectators, some of them soaking wet, waited for the game to resume or began making their way home.

When play resumed shortly before 9 p.m., about a quarter of the 84,715 fans who packed the stadium during the game's first half were still in the stands.

When the thunderstorm forced an extension of halftime, the Sooners were beating the Tennessee-Chattanooga Mocs 50-0. They went on to win 57-2.

—Jamie Birdwell contributed reporting.