Summer Travel Map

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Back in 'Bama

May 1, 2011
West Memphis, AR - Albertville, AL

Yesterday, we followed storms and today, we made it to my Brother's in Alabama.

It was sunny when we left Oklahoma City, looping around I-240 back to I-40. Clouds were on the increase as we traveled east across Oklahoma and almost all of Arkansas. We stopped for the night in West Memphis, on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River. Our original Destination, a RV Park down near the River, had called a week before to say they expected to be flooded when we arrived. I booked us into a safer location in Marion, along I-55, for the night. If it wasn't for our plumbing issues, I'd have found a boondocking spot, but I wanted to head for Rick's with empty holding tanks.

Soon after we were parked and set up, I could see from Weather Underground that a line of storms was approaching, and we had thunderstorms all night long. These storm systems are different than we're used to, which would be a line of storms along a weather front. Once the front passes, the storms are gone. Not with these systems. The storms form in a line, but then move along that front one after another. From what I could see, we had a series of storms from 8PM on, but places 50 miles northwest and 50 miles southeast of us got nothing. In any event, we kept the slides in and Maya Lynn had a very difficult night as she was quite frightened by the thunder.

We were up early and on the road by 8:30, following I-55 back to I-40. Although it was only 10 miles or so, the rain and wind increased significantly. We stopped for fuel and I was looking around for the Weather Channel guys (didn't see them). I was soaked by the time I was back in the coach, and we slowly made our way back to I-55, across the Mississippi, and then leaving the interstate to cut across the corner of Tennessee to pick up US-72 in Mississippi. We followed this route (US-72 and US-72A) to Alabama, turning to AL-67 in Decatur and AL-69 through Arab and Guntersville, then US-431 into Albertville.

Once we were in Alabama, we started seeing some evidence of the tornados and strong storms that had hit the area several days before. just before Decatur, we saw a row of houses that were heavily damaged and even totally destroyed, and we started seeing areas where the power was still out. Common sense suggests that drivers treat inoperable traffic lights as "stop signs", so we had some minor slowing but nothing too bad.

Once we got closer to Guntersville and Albertville, the damage was more evident with more trees snapped off or uprooted. We saw several power crews working to restore electricity. Interestingly, most (60%?) of the downed trees weren't snapped off but rather their whole root system came loose from the ground. We saw several sections where numerous trees were damaged this way. It's possible that these were what's called "straight line winds" as opposed to tornados. Overall, the damage can still be severe, just different. Right up the street from my brother's place, an older house was just crushed by a large tree.

They haven't had power here since last Wednesday at 6:00 AM (it's now Sunday), but it should be back soon. Rick's done a fine job of managing out of various coolers without losing much of the food stocks. This has been a good thing, since most stores in the area are closed and not getting new food shipments at this point.

More later...

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