Severe Weather

We left Brandon bright and early on Monday morning. Beautiful sunny day and the forecast was calling for winds out of the south east which meant we would have a tail wind all the way to Saskatoon. From Brandon we took Route 10 north to connect with the Yellowhead Highway at Minnedosa. This was a part of the Yellowhead that we had never driven before and found the scenery quite different from the southern TCH.

Got an unexpected surprise when Nannette spotted a bewildered looking moose in a field next to the road between Lanigan and Kandahar (Canada not Afghanistan).

You can tell how wet the west is this year. We saw a lot of fields not planted or flooded out. Water is everywhere! Yet in northern Manitoba the forests are burning like crazy because of the dryness.

Arrived in Saskatoon after an 8 hour drive and was greeted the traffic jams that always seem to occur when we hit this city. The Saskatoon 16 West RV Park we are staying in has gone downhill since our last visit. The sites are not well kept and the roads through the park are rough and full of potholes and mud holes due to the wet weather. We were also told that the mosquitoes were the worst that they have seen for years. The only salvation here is that the wind is blowing hard all day and it’s hard for the little bast...ds to fly around. After we paid our fees and got set up in a “fully serviced site”, I discovered that we had no internet access. I then find out from the office that the repeater for our area is not working. They would not move me to another site as they are full with pipeline and potash workers. Also found out that the reason for the downward slide of the park is that it changed hands. The new owners are from Korea and don’t have much experience in this business. We will stay here until Sunday as planned but will not be back ever!

Our great adventure last night was weather related. The forecast was for chance of showers but by 8 PM the sky was really black and some rain was starting to fall. About then the weather radio started beeping out warnings. Over the next five hours we went from weather watches to weather warnings for severe thunderstorms to warnings for tornados. The tornado warnings lasted for only one hour but that was a long hour.

Neither of us had ever witnessed such a light show. It will dwarf and Canada Day fireworks coming up tomorrow.  The lightning was continuous! Vertical bolts, horizontal bolts and everything in between. Thunder, horizontal rain, mixed with hail and high winds continued for the next few hours. We went to bed around 11PM but had difficulty getting to sleep. The weather radio was going off every 10-15 minutes with a new warning and the trailer was being buffeted around by the wind so hard one could almost have gotten seasick. Hard to believe when your rig weighs 13,000 lbs.

We had a brief discussion as to what we should do if a tornado should happen to arrive on the scene. All of the safety books tell you to leave the trailer and take shelter in a secure building, preferably built from brick or cement or failing that find a deep ditch to lay down in and cover your head. The washrooms in this park are built of plywood and we are in the middle of absolutely flat land with no ditches. Even if there was a ditch to get into, it would mean drowning as it would have been full of water. So we decided to stay where we were and try to go to sleep. By 3AM all was quiet and we finally fell asleep.
This morning we woke up to sunshine and found that we were in the middle of a lake. As I am writing this N spotted three sandpipers running along the waters edge by our trailer.

A lot of the sites are flooded out and for those of you who are familiar with this part of the country, the roads are slowly turning to “gumbo”. When we bought the new truck, we considered buying two-wheel drive only. I would not want to be here without four-wheel drive.

Had to wear our high rubber boots to get around this morning. Talked to one of the locals and he said he has never seen this much water in this location, not for 55 years. The park owners have just advised that the sewer system has overflowed and we cannot dump out tanks until it gets pumped out later today.

We are one of the lucky ones. Our site is still dry. Although partially surrounded by water we are in a bit of a high spot. The weather forecast is calling for more thunderstorms this afternoon and evening and then for rain on Friday and Saturday. We leave on Sunday, providing we can pull this rig out through the mud and water. Oh well, this is what we travel for, the fun and adventure.

Quote for the day:

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.   Franklin P. Jones

Cheers

P & N