Last night was a noisy one. Shortly after we went to bed, the weather radio squawked a blaring severe thunderstorm alert. It took a while before we were able to get back to sleep. Sometime after midnight we were awakened by heavy rain beating on the roof of the RV. Exhaustion finally triumphed over the racket and we slept uninterrupted until about 6:30.
Gaining an hour by crossing into the Central Time Zone yesterday helped us start out early this morning. As soon as we pulled onto I-40W we began to see the results of last night's storms: trees sheared-off about 20 feet from the ground, large signs blown down, a tractor-trailer tossed on its side. Every body of water we saw--creek, river, lake--was high and brown. The "Big Muddy" was just Big Mud today.
In my opinion, Arkansas is a state one goes through rather than to and the quicker one goes through it the better. (To be fair, the section from Little Rock to the Oklahoma border is more scenic with a better road surface and less traffic than the West Memphis to Little Rock stretch.) A woman at the Welcome Center told us a tornado hit near Little Rock last night; we learned later that 10 people had been killed.
We reached tonight's destination, Sallisaw, OK, about 3:30 and had the RV hooked up by 4. Since then, we've been watching local TV forecasters warn about and track approaching storms. A line of severe thunderstorms and a tornado have already skirted this area but more clusters are moving toward us; there's a tornado warning for this county until 10 PM.
Sallisaw, OK
April 26, 2011
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