It's Raining

10:00 AM. While we like to travel around and see the country, we are usually alert to the weather and any problems it might cause for us. After all, mobile homes are notorious for being destroyed in tornadoes and hurricanes. Structurally, our motorhome is just like a mobile home. We have one advantage over a mobile home: We have the opportunity start our engine to move away from severe weather, if we know it's coming.

We had known for a few days that it would rain today. I even suggested to Consuelo that we leave before today to avoid the rain. But we are still waiting for the rest of the mail to arrive, so we didn't.

It started raining as we went to bed, around 11:00 PM last night. It was raining this morning when we got up. It was raining hard enough that Thumper didn't want to stay outdoors, unusual for her. It's still raining as I write this at 10:00 AM.

To be prudent, I checked the weather from the National Weather Service on the web. They had issued a wind WARNING for the eastern Tennessee mountains for today, exactly where we had planned to travel. Given that we don't have a deadline anywhere at the moment, we decided to stay here until (at least) tomorrow.

Getting weather from the web is only one of the ways that we are tuned into the weather. Of course, we can get the Weather Channel on DISH when our dish is up and running. One feature I'm looking forward to soon there is the ability to get local weather on the Weather Channel via satellite. It's an Interactive application from DISH, which means that we can enter the zip code where we're watching, and the receiver will pick out the local weather info to display on our screen from all the signals available from the satellite. That will give us one more place to check for localized weather info, especially when severe weather is nearby.

We also can check on local radio and off-air local TV stations, if we can receive any. TV signals are generally more useful for this, as they have the opportunity to embed information about a weather event in the video, and have it visible for a long period of time. Many radio stations do not even have local production facilities anymore, programming comes from some other part of the country. So turning on the radio usually result is normal programming. Of course, if there is a warning from the National Weather Service via the Emergency Broadcasting System, the radio will carry it. But if we turn on the radio after the alert, we'll never hear it.

The most informative weather warning system we have is the Weather Radio that we carry. Or did carry, ours died recently and we'll need to replace it. The weather radio announces any watches or warnings directly from the nearest National Weather Service office. It sits on the desk in our RV in standby mode, listening for that beep that signifies a message we need to hear. On numerous occasions over the past 2 years, we have been warned of severe thunderstorms, tornado watches and warnings, and flood watches and warnings in our travels. We have perked up our ears in Florida, Georgia, California, and mostly at our cabin in Minnesota. Sometimes we have taken action to protect ourselves.

Today we'll wait out the storm, and listen and watch.

7:00 PM. It's still raining. Hasn't stopped all day. The news reported tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama, south of us. I went out to the store this afternoon to get printing supplies for the computers and check the mail. Otherwise, we just hung out indoors, except for Thumper who is wet and won't dry until Friday.

One more piece of mail arrived. But not the prescription... Lord know where that is.