R and J in the USA

You have heard of storm-chasers. Brazen, bold and brave.

We are none of these things.

We are, in fact, storm-fleers. Cautious, careful, scaredy-cats.

These are the more apt descriptions of our approach to severe weather.

We may have been on the road for 10 months, but road warriors, we are not. Being made of hearty western New York stock, we flinch not at threats of snow or ice storms. However, having no experience with fires or tornadoes, we flinch much. Also finding that all weather threats have a different meaning when a 100mph wind could huff and puff and blow our house right over, we are continuing our mid-trip behavior of heeding severe weather warnings and doing our best to steer clear altogether.

We just received an email from our Saturday morning Jackson, Mississippi 5K letting us know that it would be rescheduled until Sunday morning due to the weather. This prompted us to say, “Hey, I wonder what the weather is going to be this Saturday?” This prompted us to see warnings that say, “Severe thunderstorms, high winds and tornado warnings – prepare now”. Read – Julie and Ryan, get your butt outta here.

Well, roger that.

So we are preparing now.

After much research on various weather apps, we are getting the message. Despite the fact that we could probably find a place to stay with sufficient storm cellars for our own personal safety, we don’t want to risk leaving our dear GalliVAN subject to nature’s whims.

We would actually love to see the storm if we felt confident in our ability to see it safely. We’re not from around here. So, we don’t.

So, consider this a heads up to our friends and family – we are heeding the warnings and, despite a Mississippi itinerary we are half way through enjoying, we are calling an audible and headed to Pensacola, Florida today to ride out the storm.

After a few months of being behind in our itinerary, we finally updated our itinerary page just yesterday with our current and accurate itinerary. Looks like we’ll need to update it again once the storm has passed.

While we are busy fleeing, we know there are 30 states that will be hit by the severe weather, in some form or another, that will be passing through over the next few days. We are holding all in our thoughts and hoping that all are able to be prepared and safe as well.

We’ll keep you posted if we end up needing to head further east or south to get out of harms way. Safe travels to all.