Hold on tight

Spring in the midsouth area is always tumultuous but this year is a bit more so than usual.  Mother Nature seems to be flexing her muscles a quite a lot this year.  I knew from watching the local weather tweets that my area was going to get hit again but still listening to the constant interruptions of an actually interesting to me NPR segment (Amy Stewart talking about her new book Wicked Bugs) by the National Weather Service warnings was quite unnerving.  I know Elsie was having a hard time dealing with them.  Every time she'd decide it was safe to venture outside her crate, another one would pierce the airwaves and back she'd go, tail tucked and ears down.

Now the smart thing to do would have been to have found a place to park and wait the storm bands out but I kinda thought from listening to the live coverage broadcast by The Point 94.1 that I could slip in between the two storm cells hammering the central Arkansas area.  Well I did, sorta...........The first hard gusts of wind hit me while I was going over the river on I440.  All I could do was hold onto the wheel and slow waaaaay down while looking over at the very insubstantial concrete wall separating me from the water.  Yeah, there was a lot of "please don't let me get blown over the edge" going thru my head.

Get over that safely and continue on my merry (slow) way to the I30 and just before 65th Street and  it gets even slower....all the way down to 5-10 mph while getting hit near head on with straight line winds..........quite an interesting experience to be pressing on the accelerator and feeling the truck actually try to go backwards while you, the engine and the transmission are trying to force it to go forward, lol.

Apparently this is what the radar looked like when I made my decision to keep going

Thankfully I made it through ok as did most of the other traffic around me.  I did come upon an accident on I30 where it looked like a tree did its level best to smash a car and a big truck, hopefully everyone was all right.   

Ending on a lighter note, hope y'all enjoy this :-)

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