36°F and clear skies this morning, going up to 68° today. No rain in the forecast until the middle of next week.
Saturday was one of those "chamber of commerce" kind of days around here; sunny and 70-ish. We got a bunch of stuff done outside, including the first grass cutting this year. I was only able to get the area between the house and the barn, as everything else was still too wet and soggy. I did get the zero turn stuck once in the back yard. Wife uncovered the outside furniture, and found one of the chair cushions had been excavated by a squirrel mining for nest insulation. So, she got new cushions for all the deck chairs. We sat on the deck and relaxed a bit towards the end of the day, enjoying some fresh pineapple as we watched a storm moving past us just to the north. The Wife decided that ice cream sounded good. I looked at the radar, and decided I could get to the Dairy Queen in Highland before the storm got there. I watched lots of impressive ground-strike lightning on the drive there, and even got a tornado warning on my phone. The sky was looking pretty sketchy. When I pulled into the DQ drive through, I heard the voice from the box telling the driver of the car in front of me that they were not serving at the moment. So, I pulled out to drive around and go back home. As I looked west across the road, the sky had gone from sketchy to "probably-time-to-get-the-h*ll-out-of-there." The employees were wandering around outside looking at the sky, and I pointed them west. They thought it was cool. I suddenly realized that I hadn't seen the funnel moving left or right ...which meant it was moving directly towards us. I told them to be careful and left with a quickness. Driving through the south side of town, the same area where I drove into a tornado about 15 years ago, the skies opened up and dumped buckets of rain and small hail. Once a couple of cars going 15mph at the front of the line turned into a neighborhood, me and the pickup truck in front of me wasted no time getting out of town. I don't usually drive that fast on those country roads, but I had every intention of putting as much distance between me and that storm as fast as I could.
When I got home, The Wife already had the animals in the basement. We rode it out down there with no problems near us. Oddly enough, we were right in the middle in a narrow strip between two tornado warning areas. The second one to the south seemed to be following US-50 east across the state.
I had occasion to go into Highland again Sunday morning, and saw a lot of tree and utility damage along Poplar Street, where I had been pelted with hail the night before. I also read that the Ford dealership across the street from DQ lost part of their roof.
"Missed it by that much." (read in Maxwell Smart voice)
I saw late yesterday that the NWS confirmed an F1 tornado had skipped though Highland and a couple other areas.
Sunday was just windy and cool all day. We spent most of it doing indoor stuff. I finally got the new pickups installed in the Les Paul guitar. They sound way better than the stock pickups, at least for what I want out of it.
