Already! It's charging right this second.
And I re-learned a very valuable lesson in paying attention to the weather before heading out on a lengthy out-of-state trip.
I reached I-35 south of Ft. Worth about the same time as the tornadoes did. The only shelter the dogs and I had was the car we were in. At the time, that didn't seem so terrible. Rain fell heavily and I had pulled over to wait it out, under a bridge, because there were specks of hail coming down. The hail got really bad for a while, then stopped. Coupled with a greenish sky, that meant tornado, and sure enough, when I ventured out from under the bridge there was a funnel off in the distance. It was not headed towards us, but it was close enough I could already feel the increase in wind.
I did what any self-respecting tornado alley dweller would do - I drove into a ditch. Low ground, getting below ground level, in a place where the winds can't get under you and flip you over is the safest place to be if you're in a car and in a tornado. There's still the possibility that the tornado will suck you up, but that would happen only if the tornado got right over you. I was more worried about flying debris and errant winds blowing us over. A ditch was the safest place for us at that time. The dirt sides would protect us from a lot of the flying debris, the chances of the car getting flipped are reduced, and since it there was no running water in this ditch, no worries about getting washed away in a flash flood. For us, right then, staying in the car and driving into the ditch was the safest place.
If there is no safe ditch, the better choice would have been to leave the car and run for low ground and lie flat there. You'd get soaked, but you'd have a better chance of surviving.
Once in the ditch, I got into the back seat with the dogs and covered us with blankets in case the winds and/or debris blew windows out. Itzl quickly understood that we were in the safe place and settled down. Xoco was a little more frantic, but since tornadoes are fast, it wasn't a long time. We waited longer for someone to pull us out of the ditch than we did for the tornadoes to pass by.
A "good ole boy" in a huge 6-wheel pick up pulled up while I was walking the dogs and asked if I needed help. I think that's one of my special super powers - whenever I have car issues, there's always been someone kind to stop and help. I said I'd driven into the ditch to escape the tornado and now was stuck.
He said, "Wahl, I reckon me and ol' Bessie here, we kin haul y'all out. I'll get me a rope."
And a few minutes later, the car was on the highway again. I thanked him, put the dogs back in their car seat and went on.
My brother has a good chance of coming out of the coma. About 6 or 8 months ago, he was diagnosed with colon cancer and had been taking chemo. 2 weeks ago, he had a heart attack, and surgery to place 2 stents and replace a valve. Last week, I thought he was doing well enough to be leaving the hospital, so I sent him a fruit basket. Sometime during MedFair, his kidneys shut down for some reason (I didn't ask) and he went into a coma. They got his kidneys working again and said he had a good chance of waking up in the next week or three.
So I signed the papers to keep him on medical care and told them to email me if he took a turn for the worse. I'd head back down the following weekend (no taking more time off from work over this) and make a decision then.
His wife is an utter cartoon character drama queen. When she wasn't screaming, she was squalling. It was all about her and how wronged she was and how she had to do all the work and never got any of the credit and blah blah blah. To be honest, most of the time, her voice was well out of my hearing range so I just ignored what I could hear. Sometimes, I really like being hearing impaired.
The town was such a little water hole bump in the road they didn't have even a shabby No-Tell Motel and my sister-in-law refused to let me stay the night at their place because I was an evil mesclun-dealing big-city slicker (she thinks mesclun is some sort of horrible hallucinogen instead of a mix of salad greens - I've never even bothered to correct her on that) and she wasn't going to have my corrupting influence on her grandbabies (never mind that these grandbabies were all in foster care and not at her house).
Lacking a place to sleep, the dogs and I headed back. I'd intended to stop at my sister's in Mansfield and sleep over there, then head home this morning. It would mean missing another day of work, but I could deal with that.
I'd honestly forgotten about the tornado when I drove back, but I was reminded rather quickly once I reached the outskirts of Ft. Worth around 9:00 pm. There were detours and power outages which made finding gasoline especially tricky. I got lost several times looking for a gas station that was working, finally got a WiFi signal and sent my sister a message. She said their house was "OK", some shingles blown off, a couple of windows broken, and the fence was down again, but they weren't at home, they were at her husband's niece's house.
With nowhere to sleep in DFW (by then it was nearly 2:00 am), I just kept driving. We got home around 5:00 am, I took a power nap, and went to work.
I hope my brother wakes up long enough to remove my PoA over him. It's a long trip there and back when there's no break.
I didn't get any pictures because I couldn't get the Canon to work.
The Nikon I bought Monday arrived today, too late to take photos of the trip. It's charging right now, so I should be able to start snapping photos again this evening.
In the meantime, here's another MedFair photo or two: