Monday, March 4, 2019
OK, so we were going to move anyway……… It’s time to start heading a little farther west. Yes, I know, you looked at the map and said to yourself, “Self, that’s not a lot farther west and it is a lot farther north!” And, Self, you’d be correct. We are pretty much done with the coastal areas of the South and want to head more inland.
Back to the storm. We were sitting in a “marginal area” for severe storm activity beginning last Saturday evening. Marginal means a 5% chance of severe storms. You know, storms that produce high sheer winds, severe lightning storms that produce large hail and an occasional tornado. The prediction was for “heavy thunderstorms”, whatever that means.
Well Saturday evening is when Frog City RV Park put on the crawfish boil- and the weather was pretty good. Overcast as usual but pretty good. We learn from the weather guessers that the storm is coming in quite a bit later than predicted but are still guessing that we’ll have quite a bit of rain and a goodly amount of thunder and lightning.
This is what really happened. Sunday morning I had walked our Lab, Megan, who has a bad habit of needing the most perfect spot to take a dump. That means we could walk for a mile before she decides that she has found that perfect spot. It doesn’t matter that her colon could be bursting, she will always have to find the perfect location to do her duty. We could be out for a very long time, sometimes a half hour or more until she relieves herself. Doyle, our little Aussie, on the other hand is not shy. When he needs to go he goes- sometimes in the least discreet location- like on a sidewalk.
OK back to what really happened. It started raining- hard. Then it would let up for a while. That’s the time we’d take advantage of walking the dogs. The streets in the park started to flood. Oh My! The weather stayed that way for a few hours but no severe weather in our area, and no thunder. About mid morning we were walking the dogs a noticed a very dark low hanging band of clouds to our north. THAT LOOKED OMINOUS! It passed by and did not affect us but 50 miles east that same storm cell dropped golf ball sized hail on a place called Gross Tete.
Temperatures this morning were a muggy 70+ degrees, even with the rain and cloudy skies. After the warm front was pushed east the cold front took over- and how! The temperature dropped 30 degrees in just minutes. Sort of reminded me of what folks in Texas have been known to say- “If you don’t like the weather now, just wait a minute”. The warm and muggy weather is gone which means in my mind the minimal threat of severe weather has passed.
Our current location is in Shreveport, LA, a couple of hundred miles north and slightly west of Duson. Our plan is to hunker down here for a few days then head west towards the Dallas, TX area. Who knows where we’ll end up after that. The only known is that we are heading west from, there slowly meandering slowly towards home.
Travel With Jil and Mike 