Thursday, May 26, 2011

Road Trip Day 3 - Here Safe and Sound

We finally got here to St Clair yesterday evening after a longer day than we expected.  All was going well driving from Council Bluffs IA down to Kansas City and then a severe thunder storm hit.  There were tornado warnings on the radio for several areas in the region and then we heard the tornado sirens near where we were and the radio warning said "Do not delay take cover immediatelly!"  We pulled off the I495 at the next exit to look for a place to stop and pulled into the first place we saw which appeared to be a church.  As we ran to the entrance to get out of the rain downpour we found it was a funeral home.  The people there said we could go downstairs with some others listening to the warnings on the radio.  We waited there for about an hour until the sirens and warnings were off for that area.  Then we went to a Mcdonalds to get some lunch while using the wifi to check the weather reports on my ipod. By that time it looked good enough to head back out on the highway.  The rest of the trip was less eventful and we made it safely to St Clair after several more hours driving.

This area has had several tornados in the last while so that is the main news down here and people here are taking the warnings seriously.  The tornado at Joplin MO on Sunday had 122 confirmed deaths and many more missing. There were about 12 deaths in other tornados Tuesday.  While we were travelling yesterday there were continuous warnings of tornados in various places and it is a good thing we took shelter until the storm cleared because one tornado caused damage and injuries in a town just ahead of where we were heading.

We arrive here about 7 PM tired but safe and sound.  I will post more about our visit later and some pictures...