Friday, March 27, 2009

Day 78 - March 26th - Last Resort RV Park - Rockport, TX

In a Word - Tornado

Day started normal - not much to do - Same old- same old - Breakfast - read - lunch.

Just an edit that I had forgot about until I read John's Blog. Rather than re-write it I am going to just borrow his words. Here is what he had to say:
Earlier in the day we had some excitement of a different sort. When we first arrived here there was an elderly couple and their son (we think) setting up a trailer in the site next to us. They built some wooden steps as the older gentleman had trouble negotiating those RV type steps and then spent a couple of days cleaning it up and getting it ready to serve as a summer get away. They live in San Antonio and this was their place at the beach. Well it turns out the trailer, unbeknownst to them, was stolen. They had apparently bought it from someone who didn’t really own it so the Aransas County Sheriff and his boys descended on it this morning. They were crawling all over and under it checking serial numbers and then climbed inside through one of the storage compartments to check out the interior. I guess they had already informed the older folks of their bad luck. Too bad it always seems to be elderly folks who can ill afford it that these kind of things happen to.

Then we took a jaunt up to Capano Bay and toured some of the residential subdivisions around there. Every body is on the water, either on Capano Bay or a small lake connected to the bay. All seem to have piers running several hundred feet out into deeper water, and of course everyone has a boat. I guess that is what it's all about living on the water. After touring there for a while decided time to head home. Stopped at HEB for a couple of things for dinner - BAR-B-Qued chicked and potatoe salad. I noticed that while I was walking out of HEB that it was extremely humid, with heavy black clouds overhead, and rolling thunder. Remarked to Denice, " that at least the clouds are not green" that is an indication of tornado weather. Driving the five miles home did, encounter a couple of heavy thundershowers, but nothing severe. Once home and inside ELTORO, decided to turn on the telly and check the weather channel.

NO more than had it on than there was Tornado alert - Tornado alert!!!!

At 4:04 PM a tornado had been identified by Doppler radar 5 miles north of Aransas Pass and was to pass about 7 miles west of Rockport toward the Gulf. As we are 2 or 3 miles west of Rockport already, it seemed that it was likely to be very close to us. And then it started to RAIN, and I mean POUR.
We could hardly see across the lane in front of us. This is the water running down our windshield.I called John on our radio to alert him of the possibility of a tornado. What should we do???? Motorhomes do not have very good basements to protect you in, so I guess we just ride it out. In about 15 minutes we were in a river, Water up to a couple of inches was running under our motorhomes and on down the RV Park. Pretty flat here, so no place for the water to go. Good thing the soil is nothing but sand, so it disappears quite quickly. By 4:30 the rain stopped and the sun came out under blue skies. A pan I had sitting out on the picnic table had about 2" of water in it from the 30 minutes storm. I don't think that anybody actually saw a tornado funnel, but we weren't really looking. Just a little spooky!!
But still interesting for us northerners.
The rest of the day was just like any other day.

1 comment:

  1. ...just another day of retirement, eh? And you say that there's nothing of interest to write about... Samantha says, "Isn't it time for you to come home?"

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