Mean Thunderstorm..welcomed? Unwelcome?

Today started off with it over 100 degrees before lunchtime. By afternoon the heat index was in the low hundreds and our show shelter with it's metal roof was little more than a convection oven. Still audiences came, we sweat and performed. Sometimes it was hard to be out there pouring our our best while our sweat pour out our pores. But around 4 something the clouds quickly grew dark and the wind started whipping around. The plastic colorful decorations that lined the poles around our shelter were being torn apart. I ordered everyone check that everything is battened down and anything that can get wet be stowed.

Then it came. First the thunder then the lightening then the bucket after bucket of rain. The girls pretended to be scared (they have been in scores of these storms) and huddled together in a pile on the floor. They were comforted by their friends, The "stalkers". The temp dropped from over 100 to in the mid 70s in less than three minutes. The wind continued to whip around and part of the metal roof of our shelter (one of the 4 oldest building at Beech Bend...it was once a carousel shelter) started to lift and bend (see the picture.)

There was no real danger, the building is built like a tank. And the storm ended as quickly as it came. First it settled to a heavy rain with lighter wind then it just died away and the sun came out.

On our drive home we would pass several very expensive home with large trees split or completely felled. Branches lay everywhere. I was impressed with how fast the local authorities cleared the streets of the many fallen branches and trees. We even saw a large metal sign bend 90 degrees at its poles. Cemetery flowers and other debris littered the main drag back to our hotel. Then suddenly we reached a part of town not 1/4 mile from the debris area that looked perfectly unaffected by the storm.

As I said the sun had come out and we were able to stage our third show (5pm show) and in spite of the rain a half hour earlier we had a decent size crowd. The photo here shows some of the audience after the show learning to do tricks I teach after the show.

Right after the storm the girls all took their shoes off and went running around in the puddles and streams that formed on the blacktop of the amusement park in front of our shelter.

We have friends from Toledo come down to visit with us for a couple of days. They are friends of Brandon's family and have become our friends. They joined us for dinner at the hotel.