Yesterday was Operación de Rrasladar El Jefe Operation Relocate El Jefe. I drove my brother’s big ass truck (a country girl can survive!) (and holy crap, $90 to fill that bitch up!) to Oxford and we loaded it down like we were storing up for the apocalypse. Little did we know how close to the truth that would be…
I beat the storms out of town yesterday morning. It was crazy because I seriously drove through a line of sunlight, while I could see two different storm systems on either side of me. Oxford, was sunny and humid and we worked like pack mules to load up the trucks and U-haul so we could haul our asses out of there before the big storms hit.
We had no rain for the first 2 hours of the 3.5 hour drive. But as we were nearing Brinkley, we could see the crazy lightning storms and swirly skies and we knew we were heading right into the mouth of the dragon. (We also knew because of Mike Francis broadcasting on the radio and Fishdog calling to tell me where the funnel clouds were and how long we had… a big thank you for that, Fishdog. Seriously.)
We made it to Brinkley just as the sirens began to wail and just as it began to hail. We stood outside and watched. The cinder block building protected us from the straight-line winds and the rain. It was pretty amazing to see the storm roll in.
That flagpole was nearly bent into an arch a couple of times, the winds were so strong…
Luckily, we didn’t have any tornadoes.
Sadly, there are parts of the state that weren’t so lucky. Vilonia, AR was mowed down by a half-mile wide Wedge Shaped massive tornado.
We are supposed to have round two tonight, but I’m hoping things aren’t quite as tumultuous as last night was.
Bitchin' Fiction: Musings by author Melissa McKenzie / Melissa Francis 