Our New Waterfront Site

This morning started dark. Most mornings do, I know, but at this time of morning it should have been light. The sky to the west was black, not dark but black. In fact the only time I recall seeing a sky similar to this was on the day the tornado hit Barrie. Thunder was rumbling around the sky from all directions.

Just before we had breakfast Lyn answered the door; it was our neighbour saying there was a tornado warning just issued for the area, and that a lot of people were moving to the club house.

We elected to stay in the trailer, partly because we hadn’t had breakfast yet and partly because we didn’t believe the clubhouse was really robust enough to provide much more protection.

A quick look at the radar showed very heavy precipitation and thunder cells just off to the west, together with a tornado signature that was going to track slightly  north of us. During breakfast the wind increased and there was a lot of lightning activity, but not as much rain as I expected. The weather radar showed that the tornado had passed north of us, but that there was a lot more storm activity to come.

Lyn had a hair appointment at 11:00, so we sat around watching the storm (and the radar). The thunder and lightning were ceaseless, and the rains increased. By the time we had to leave the rain was in full swing, the roads were showing signs of flooding and the lightning was doing its thing. As we drove through one set of traffic light there was a bolt of lightning and we could see all the lights in a city block go out…. including WalMart

I dropped Lyn off at the hairdressers and waited in the truck for her. At this time the heavens just opened for about 20 minutes, the lightning was more like a strobe light, never stopping. The road flooded over and at the junction of the side road it got to about 12″ deep. By the time Lyn came out the rain had eased quite a bit but was still very heavy.

Back at the campsite there large puddles on the road, but overall the drainage seemed to be holding its own, when we got to the trailer we noticed a river flowing behind us that wasn’t there before!!

The New River

The rain finally stopped at 1230, in the three hours since it started 3″ had fallen (equivalent to 75cm / 2.5ft  of snow). By this time a state of emergency had been declared by the State Governor due to flood and tornado damage. The tornado I saw on radar destroyed 8 houses in one of the small towns we drove through on Monday.

Once again the trailer stayed dry on the inside, thankfully.

On a different note, I have had to put a small verification process on the page when you register or leave a comment. I am getting an increasing number of comments being left by web bots (robots) which are nothing more than advertising. Hopefully this will keep them at bay. Drop me an e-mail if it is causing a problem.