It’s 4 am and our phones are screaming with an emergency signal. Do you know the difference between a tornado watch or a tornado warning?  We didn’t either.  All we knew is that we were being woke up to take immediate shelter, which according to the warning was not in the RV.

We had headed from Orlando to Memphis, Tennessee.  We knew it was going to be a long drive and we weren’t really sure about the roads as we weren’t able to travel on major interstates the whole way. So we just decided we would drive as long as we could then stop for the night.  Down came the rain and washed the RV off.  Believe it or not we have only had to use the wiper blades a few times and only for a few minutes thus far on the whole trip, which is about 3 months into it at this point.  The storm we were clearly driving through was persistent, but our wipers were not.  

As the storm increased so did the wind and it tried to hijack our driver’s side wiper.  In the process, it broke our wiper.  Like that is not a big enough challenge, but we are in the middle of Alabama somewhere with no towns anywhere around.  So Kurt pulls off at the nearest exit and gets out to look at the wiper, yup it’s definitely broken.  Thankfully I am married to a vary industrious man and he was able to JB weld it together.  We just have to let it dry before we can proceed.  At this point, it is just after midnight so we decide to go to bed.

We all know the sound of the emergency signal that ever annoying and alarming beeeeeeeeeeepppppppp that will wake anyone out of a sound sleep. We bolt up and look at the message Tornado warning take immediate shelter.  Kurt pulls up the weather radar, thank goodness we were in an area where we had signal and he was able to, and the tornado funnel has been sighted less than 5 miles from us and moving in our direction.  We praise the Lord for his warning and check to see if the wiper blade is dry.  It is not so we pray that God would stop the rain.  He did!!! So we immediately took off and finished driving to Memphis. The thunder and lightning was crazy before we stopped for the night so we were very thankful the Lord had stopped the rain.

We got to Memphis and were checking into places to stay knowing we would be there about a week for sure, but barely being there for 15 minutes and a tornado watch alarm comes over our phones again. Kurt again looks at the weather radar and sees that Memphis is under a tornado watch for the next 3 days. Now if we would have known the difference between a tornado watch and warning we probably would have stayed in Memphis, but since we didn’t we drove on yet again to get to Jonesboro, Arkansas.

It would be just over 2 more weeks before we would learn the difference between the two.  So a tornado watch simply means the weather conditions are present that could create a tornado, much of tornado alley residents spend the tornado season under a tornado watch so they take little notice.  But when we were in Branson a couple weeks later, it was raining and thunder and lightning steadily for most of the day and night and we watched the lake near the RV park slowly start to flood the surrounding areas.  We had no idea it was associated with the tornado season and so when the sirens started going off, then our phones started going off we knew.  This time it was a tornado warning, which means a funnel has been sighted nearby, telling us to take shelter.  So we headed to the RV office and asked what they recommended.  They very calmly escorted us out to their concrete garage where other RV residents were gathering.  We no sooner got in and started introductions than the sky got extremely black and it was like God opened up the faucet to full blast.  I’ve never seen so much rain come down all at once, then it turned to hail, then back to rain, then back to hail.  It did this for almost 30 minutes.  We got to know all our neighbors and exchange stories, which was quite fun and they explained to us the difference between a tornado warning and a watch.  

Then just like that the rain stopped and we all got to go about our day.  You could tell those who had clearly been through these types of warnings before and those who hadn’t.  We were very thankful for the education, but more so for God’s protection while we learn all kinds of new weather systems. Stay tuned next time for Memphis, you won’t want to miss this one!