I rode my bike in the wind this morning, whew, that can be a good workout. I forgot to take my camera, so no pictures. I saw two pretty red cardinals though, one bright and one subdued so I guess they were a couple. Chorro thought I left too early so he didn't move from his spot on the bed. He'll be counting on me going out with him later on.
The sky darkened about 3 this afternoon and I could hear the word 'tornado' in conversations outside. I'm not sure what the tornado protocol would be, but there were the usual cruise throughs of the campground by rangers this afternoon. I imagine they would be alert to any real danger. I checked the weather channel on my computer and learned that we were under a tornado watch until 7 pm. My son informs me that a tornado watch is less worrisome than a tornado warning. The first says there might be a tornado, the second says there is. So I will not be worrying as much as I could be.
We scrapped the plan to hike to a CCC overlook of the bayou/ocean this afternoon and instead I spent the time reading up on some of my manuals -- my GPS system and my bicycle tune-up manual -- and lightly dipped into a couple of sugar free cookbooks. I have a friend who is looking for a good whole-wheat-no-sweeteners pizza crust recipe. There must be one out there somewhere.
Strangely, the campgrounds I frequent seem to have tractors. That would seem unusual to me but perhaps I'm not caught up on current campground practices either. As I sat in my chair reading this afternoon, I heard yet another tractor. Here it was, right beside my RV, ripping out my grill. What if I had planned to barbeque a steak this evening?
Fortunately for both of us I had a pork roast with cabbage in the crock pot.
Well the tornado watch has passed and the rain has begun. We might get wet but it doesn't look like we're going to blow away tonight.
And tomorrow is a new day.
1 comment:
Something I should like to add.
A tornado watch means that conditions are right for the formation of tornados.
This is a good time to get prepared. Those of us in tornado country make sure the lawn furniture is put up and the storm alarm is working. We also already know where we are going and what we are doing in case the sirens go off. (In our case we look at the weather map on the tv and determine if we need to head for our shelters...which we did during this last tornado which kind of sought us out as it passed within a mile of both me at home and my daughter at school.)
For those of you in RV's you should be figuring out where you are going if the sirens go off, and if you are somewhere where they don't have sirens its a good time to plug in your weather radio (and hopefully everyone has one). An RV is a terrible place to be during a tornado. Every loose object becomes a weapon the wind will use to try to damage you with. The odds of being picked up and sent to Oz are miniscule compared to the odds of being hit by a board, a piece of aluminum siding, or even a straw (my dad had a story of a tornado sending a piece of straw into a tree sticking there like an arrow).
A Tornado warning is when the sirens go off. This means that there is a tornado. Sometimes on the ground and sometimes in the air. Tornados can travel great distances over multiple states and drop out of the clouds many times, or not at all.
Tornados also are unpredictable in their paths, the last one headed straight for my house, then veered east for a mile, then veered north for about 5 miles then went back to its NW course. So if you are in the path of a tornado, even if it looks like its going to miss you.... be prepared.
Growing up in Montana, our experience with tornadoes was on TV with the Wizard of Oz. Therefore I err to the side of caution. When I lived in Alabama, the weather guy would tell people "Ok, if you live in this area, get to your shelter immediately, but if you live in this area, you can go out on the porch and watch it."
I never watched it....
Post a Comment