The oncoming storm

Despite my rather chirpy entry over on my hair bow blog, I'm regarding today with a fair amount of trepidation.  My resident storm spotter Rita Cheryl is scanning what little of the horizon she can see.  The tree line is a bit of a hindrance.  

Don't let that ordinary gray sky fool you!  The weather folks have been predicting this storm system all week, and they've been saying ever since last Saturday that it's gonna be intense.  Wind advisories were up as early as three o'clock yesterday morning, so we knew we'd have that much.  Indeed, I had a hard time keeping Rita Cheryl balanced in the picture above, and y'all can see her hair whipping around.  Here's what the wind advisory looks like; it extends until early tomorrow morning, and it may get re-issued.

Here's a screenshot of the radar as of 8:30 this morning.  

Not much to see right now, but I'm dreading what it'll look like this afternoon.  Tornadoes and severe thunderstorms are not exclusively an afternoon/evening thing, but afternoon is the best time, when the air is the warmest and the atmosphere is unstable.  When the storms are all in a line like in a squall, that's not great, but when the storms are fewer and spread apart like zits on a high-schooler's cheeks, that's when they can feed on their surroundings and get bad, like they did in December of 2021.  It's hard to tell in the screenshot I got back then, but those storms were spread out over a wide area instead of being in a single line, and as such they didn't have to compete with each other for all that warm air coming in from the south.  This afternoon they're predicting something similar, though nothing is quite set in stone yet.

So Rita Cheryl is clad in her friendship bracelet and her favorite Shinedown shirt, and I have her "go-go bag" packed with her mini doll, her backpack (which has a few trinkets in it; all my dolls like trinkets), and a few items of clothing that y'all haven't seen before.  

All of that is crammed into the zippered compartment on the bottom.  You okay in there, Mini Gabby?

Yeah!  It's cozy!

In that case, Rita Cheryl is all set.  If I'm going over the rainbow I'm taking my favorite doll with me.

I don't know why these doll carriers are advertised as holding two dolls, because when I do put two in there it's a tight squeeze.  I also think it's a pity that they don't come in my size, LOL. 

Of course I also have my purse loaded with necessities.  My identifications, my medicine, my W-2 forms (still haven't done my taxes, LOL), a little dab of money, house keys (if I still have a house to go to at the end of the day), assorted girly stuff, the works.  My mom is packed up too, just in case the sh!t does hit the fan.  Malden has been incredibly blessed over the past few years and I pray that good fortune will hold up.  Even when the last significant tornado came through there were no deaths (not here, anyway).  Property damage?  Yes.  Injuries?  Yes.  But thank God, no one died.  The folks on the south side did have a mess on their hands, though!  

If anything goes down, I'll keep y'all posted.  Be safe out there; these storms are predicted to cover a wide part of the central U.S.

Love,
RagingMoon1987