Caught in a Storm

Mini Book Mama and I took a couple of the dogs out for a walk at a local park this morning. The rain was supposed to hold off until around noon. We got over a mile into the trail, when it started to rain - big fat rain-drops. So we turned around and headed back toward the car. Then it started getting really dark and we could hear thunder in the distance. The rain lightened up a bit and although we were already wet, we thought maybe that was the end of it. Then we started hearing this really strange noise, really loud like thunder, but not thunder. I realized it was very heavy rain hitting the metal roofs of the boat docks across the lake. It was pouring and you could see in the water exactly where the border of the rain was and it was coming our way. Then it hit, with straight line winds and blinding rain coming down on us or I should say straight sideways at us. We were going as fast as we could with the dogs, but were still a ways from the car. The rain was hitting us so hard it felt like hail and it hurt!!! It was so heavy that we couldn't hardly see and the wind was so fast speeding by us that it was hard to even breathe - like it was sucking the air out of us. We finally made it to the car and I was putting one dog in the back while Mini Book tried to get the other in the back seat. That was the first chance I could catch a breath leaning into the tailgate of the car. We finally got into the car and visibility was like zero. We sat there for a minute just trying to figure out what had happened.

On the short drive back to the house, we had to go around two downed trees. When we got out of the car, we heard tornado sirens in the distance. After checking the TV it looked like there weren't any tornados, but high speed straight line winds had done a lot of damage including turning over a few semi trucks on the highways nearby.

This picture of Mini Book Mama and Scooter was taken just a few minutes before the rain started.