The Storm

Off the TV last night

What an interesting day.  The storm hit overnight as predicted.  From the safety of the hotel room, I only heard some loud thunder in the early hours of the morning, even though it was raining very hard when we woke up....early.  The rain stopped fairly early as well.  I reorganized the truck, and we headed off.  I only had time to do one thing before trying to beat the storm to Memphis, so I did the tour at the Grand Ole Opry.  So glad I did.  Quite a treat seeing the backstage and standing on the circle where so many famous country singers have stood.  The guide even had us sing a song so we could say "I was asked to sing at the Grand Ole Opry".  Very cool.  While in there, the rain started again for round two, with lots of thunder.

 

These guys from the parking lot like the weathe

As we headed down the 40 toward Memphis, we ran through the second, and then the third storm.  The radio had several tornado warnings, even one of those with the loud noise that interrupts programming.  The trouble was, it kept referring to counties, and I had no idea which county I was in.  Tons of rain and lightning on the road which made it hard to see.  The only time I got really nervous was when it got really dark, and was raining really hard with lots of wind.  Pretty scary after all those warnings.  But pretty exciting.  It's so cool to see that kind of weather since we have nothing like it at home.  The sky was changing constantly and I  kept busy watching for that infamous funnel cloud.  As fun as it was, in a weird way, I sure wouldn't want to live here and have to deal with this all the time.  There has been a lot of flooding too.  All the creeks and rivers have overflowed their banks.  The Mississippi was amazingly wide.  Too wide from the flooding.  There were lots of trees down and other signs of wind damage.  I'm at a KOA tonight.  There was a sign on the door about where to go if the sirens went off which meant a tornado was coming.  As I write this, the wind has gotten very strong and the rain is pounding again even though last I heard the serious threat was gone.  This sure isn't the boredom I was expecting on the 40.