Batten down the hatches?

The weather weasels, Jim Cantore included, said today would be "strong storms moving in by noon..."

I took my scooter out to pick up some breakfast around 9:00 - it was overcast, but pleasant.  We sent some e-mails and made some calls, trying to arrange an RV site for this winter - no one is around.

When noon rolled around, we looked to the south and east, and it didn't look bad out... we decided that maybe this system was going to move east of us; we went out for a light lunch.  When we got to the restaurant, we could see an ugly cell to the east of us; it didn't look like it was moving towards us.

By the time we were about half way through our sandwich, the first gust hit - dirt was blowing sideways, from the east to the west... followed quickly by a pounding downpour.  Fortunately for us, we weren't on a schedule.  At best, we were considering some indoor shopping, in anticipation of some rain.  We enjoyed a sundae, and ... the rain stopped.  The parking lot was wet, but no rain falling when we walked to the car.

I suggested a stop at a nearby Guitar Center before going north a bit to Cabela's.  Joan pointed out an airplane heading right towards the worst of the cell to the east.  We watched the airline as we drove, glad to be down here and not up there.  As we turned into the parking lot of shopping center where Guitar Center is located, the sky opened up again - REALLY pouring...

Joan suggested that going from the guitar to the store in this pounding rain probably wasn't a good idea, no matter how close we could park.

Got that right.

It was pounding so hard that the wipers couldn't keep up with it when we weren't moving...

We waited for the rain to let up a little bit, decided to can any plan of going anywhere but back to the house, and made our way to the Interstate...

Water was standing on the Interstate - apparently, whoever the road engineer was didn't put a lot of thought into water drainage in this spot.  The going was relatively slow, but in about 5 miles, we drove out of it... dry roads... just gusty wind blowing the dust ahead of it... that's going to make for some mud when the rain catches up to it.  ;-)

Back to the house, put the car in the garage and settled in for the afternoon.  Joan asked if I wanted to watch anything on the DVR that Steph had recorded for us.  "How about 'All Is Lost,' the Robert Redford movie?" (where everything bad happens to him on his sailboat in the middle of the ocean)

We are at the part where his boat has capsized, rolled, and been dismasted.  A storm is raging.  He put out the life-raft.  Yep, there goes the boat... glub, glub, glub.

On the bright side, it is nice and dry in the house.  ;-)