STORMS

This is really crazy weather we are experiencing here in East Tennessee.  Its been raining hard daily.  Happy and I went to work on Cherokee Lake this afternoon and the forecast was for storms late in the afternoon.  The sky was threatening on the horizon but I didn't think much of it.

Things looked good on the lake when we got there so we launched the boat and were off.

 Happy loves being close to dad and was the perfect little companion laying at my feet.  A check on the sky after a couple hours indicated that some weather was moving in fast.  Lightning was in that dark area and I figured it was time to be safe and get back to the boat trailer before I got too far away.

I just pulled the boat out of the water when that mess blew in.  The shot below is through the truck front windshield.  The wind was blowing so hard that the truck was rocking.

Glad I'm not out there in that!  Wind and water like in the picture above makes it almost impossible to load a big boat onto a trailer.  We decided to drive downstream to the next boat ramp to see if the same conditions existed there.  They didn't.  I relaunched the boat and continued back toward the lake area I needed to be in.  If things got bad - I could just turn back the way I came and return.  No problem.  That's what I thought.
See below:

As I headed back toward my work area, I turned and looked behind me over my shoulder.  What!  The darned storm blew in behind me.  It was also coming in from my left.

I had enough of this junk.  I whipped the boat around and headed straight toward the mess and back to the boat ramp.  Hopefully we'd get to the ramp before the storm caught us.

Hang on Hap!  We made it back and got off the water.  I stood on the boat ramp parking lot and watched the black sky get closer and closer until the rain and wind started.  We got in the truck and were off.  Called it a day.
I have never seen weather like this.  There are no gentle showers, which would be fine and actually desirable and fun to boat in.  It seems that hard storms are all we see this season.  Heavy rain coupled with hard, fast wind and lots of lightning are a daily occurrence.  The boat will take it fine, but the lightning is one thing I don't want to mess with.  Sixty to 80 mile per hour wind is something else I don't want to mess with.

I have three friends driving motorcycles down the Blue Ridge Parkway from Pennsylvania right now and I know they are going to drive right into storms.  I warned them about the bad weather predictions but they're coming anyway.  They should be at Freebornes Motorcycle Hotel right now which is in Laural Springs, NC located a hundred yards off the parkway.  Tomorrow night they will be in Cherokee, NC which is at the bottom of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I know that mountain is going to get nailed hard and heavy with rain.  I'll call in a short to see how they are doing.  That's it for today.  Tomorrow I'll be back on the Holston River --- in storms.