“So, if you get into trouble, just point right at it. I mean, cars are meant to withstand the most force from the front, right? 120 mph. 140 mph. It’s best to take it head on instead of broadside or from behind because it’s not built to withstand pressure from that direction.” At that point, Amy interrupted Dave and said, “What?!?” Clearly, Dave had gone right back into his tornado chasing days and was excitedly telling us stories interspersed with ‘nuggets of wisdom’ since we were heading down into “Tornado Alley”. Without seeming to hear Amy, Dave then pulled out his phone and told us a few different apps to use to track the storms as they generally move east-northeast and since the roads are gridded out north and south, you need to stay below the storms as you track them so you always have ways to escape. “Wait, wait. What did you say about the direction of pointing the car?!?” Dave looked up at Amy and smiled a broad smile and stated, “Well, uh, I mean, that’s not going to happen but, you know, it’s good to know.” Our collective laugh broke the tension as Amy made me and the boys (read: me, again) promise not to chase storms across the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle. I looked directly at her and said we would not chase storms … without detaching the rig first. Another joke but heartfelt; we were not about to hunt for tornados across the southern US plains, but we were heading directly into their breeding grounds.
Finally, and with Dave’s blessings via bursts of texts with attached and updated radar images, we meandered east towards the monster and Lake Meredith, our boondocking spot for the night. For an entire afternoon and evening we had been skirting on the edge of a series of storms and luckily we were on the back edge of this one. The back edge that saw the beauty in the monster as the sunset revealed its gorgeous tropospheric plumes above rainbows brilliant in the growling darkness churning across the earth. Falling asleep we were fortunate to never feel its wrath.
2 Comments
Rach
5/25/2016 04:43:23 am
Killer post! Up since 2a California time from jet lag (trip to France) so thrilled to find s great read! XO to you all!
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May 2016
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