Tornado?

Wesley Chapel, Florida

We spent most of yesterday trying to get the new truck set up.  We ordered  Weather Tech custom floor mats.  Those are the ones you see advertised on tv and they appear to be very nice. 

We find regular floor mats don’t work well for our life style. We are in too many dirty, sandy areas and always make a mess on the carpet floor mats.

These rubber mats extend every where your feet go, including getting in and out of the vehicle, and behind and beside the pedals.  They are digitally measured to fit your particular vehicle.  The cost was $169 for both front and back. 

They have a lip around the sides to keep sand  and dirt from spilling off the mat onto the carpeting.

Next stop was a topper for the truck bed.  We have one on the old truck, but of course it won’t fit and is the wrong color.   More $$$$$  

We also are internet shopping for a baseplate for the truck to be able to tow, and a drive shaft disconnect.   Yikes…this is getting expensive.  We also have to pay to have our Air Force One braking system moved over to the new truck.  We knew how much all the other items would cost, but this one was a bit of a surprise and is not going to be cheap.

These extra expenses, and hassles are why I had fought to NOT buy a new vehicle.  Al finally won the battle though.     I am glad to have the larger new truck and driving an automatic is nice, but it’s getting expensive.

The Honda will be ready this morning, and we’ll get it listed on Craig's List.  It should sell easily. 

After running around most of the day, we came home and had a nap until the storm started.

Wow….what a storm.  I got up and told Al we were going to get a bad storm.  He responded that this is just the normal afternoon thunderstorms.

No…it wasn’t.

It got real windy, with a lot of rain and thunder and lightning.  I was getting pretty nervous.

We watched the storm on the radar on my Droid, and we could tell it wouldn’t last too long.   The weather radio went off but there were no tornado warnings.

Our front window sunscreen was blown completely off.  It  is held on with extremely strong heavy duty magnets.  It has never blown off before.   The tire covers blew off, but we expected that.

This is one time, I am glad to be in the newer, un-shaded  section of the campground.  We have young trees that are maybe 20 feet tall, but have small trunks.  If one of them went down, it wouldn’t crush the coach.  The older section has huge beautiful oak trees.

Right across the street from us to the right a large tree branch came down on the park owners fence.  Yesterday morning his new 5th wheel was parked there.  He headed west earlier in the day.

Right behind that fence, a 91 year old man lived.  A huge tree branch came down on his 5th wheel.  He was uninjured, but pretty shaken up according to his daughter.

There was no visible damage to the rv, but there were a lot of tree branches covering up the side.

I don’t know how they are going to get the trailer out of there.  If it’s moved, the branch will probably fall all the way.  His daughter was inside trying to get his insulin and a few personal items.  I was leery about going inside to try to help her. 

Here is David and Sherry’s motor home.  We went over to check on it as soon as we could.   We didn’t see any damage, thankfully.  They sure don’t need any more problems at this time.

They had been at the hospital all day and were unaware of the storm.  I warned Sherry a few days ago about leaving the awning out when they were gone.  She listened to me and her awning was not damaged.   A lot of others were not so fortunate.

They had a long, hard day at the hospital yesterday and had to find an alternate way home, because of a huge tree that was downed over the road leading to the campground. 

There were small branches all over the place.

There were a few smaller trees, and a few Palm trees down in the newer section of the campground.   Nothing like the older section with all the large trees.

We didn’t think there was a tornado.  We only saw some pretty strong winds.  Denis Phillips (our favorite weatherman) said there was 70 mph winds in some areas, but they are saying there were no tornados.

One of the guys we talked to that was in one of the harder hit areas, swears he saw a tornado.  He said the trees were swirling around and he was sure it was a small tornado.

I don’t know, but it was definitely much worse than Florida’s normal summertime afternoon storms.

We’re expecting the same thing today once the afternoon sea breezes start to kick in.  I hope it won’t be so bad.

Another day in paradise??