Monday, June 30, 2008

Welcome to my new blog

I’m so excited to have my first activity to post.

This weekend my Grandma H. came to town to go to the Huntsville Air Show 2008 featuring the Blue Angels. I was not planning on attending the air show when I first heard about it. About 3 weeks ago my Aunt Kandy called and asked if I wanted to go. She said they had VIP tickets. I quickly thought about it and said “Yes”. I’ve never had real VIP treatment before, so I thought this would be a good place to find out what it’s like. Kandy told me that they wanted to go to the Saturday show. So for 2.5 weeks I thought we were going on Saturday, until last Thursday morning when my Uncle John emailed me and told me that he was given Sunday VIP tickets. I thought, no big deal, Sunday is just as good as Saturday. All the weather people were forecasting 50% - 60% chance of rain for the whole weekend and I was a little worried about being caught in the rain. On Saturday, it didn’t rain until about 5:30pm and that only lasted for about 10 minutes. I thought, if they were all wrong about the rain on Saturday, they are probably going to wrong about the weather on Sunday.

Sunday morning I woke up to a cloudy sky. I looked up at the clouds and said, “Those are white puffy clouds. It’s not going to rain today.” I met up with John, Kandy and Grandma at John & Kandy’s house around 10:15 and we were at the air show around 12 noon. We checked in at our tent and immediately got in line for lunch. We ate lunch in the tent then headed out in front of the tent to get a better view of the show. The sun was beating down on us with a nice cool breeze, perfect day for an air show. Of course I got burnt to a crisp. A couple passing clouds decided to spit rain at us, but nothing threatening. At about 1:45 John said, “It’s raining over there (While pointing to the dark ominous cloud in front of us.).” We didn’t really think much about it since there was no lightning or thunder. At around 2:00 the announcer announced that they were going to postpone the next act until the rain blew over and suggested everyone head into the tents to avoid the rain. So the 4 of us got up and went into the tent. About 3 minutes after we got in the tent, the picket fencing that surrounded the seating area started falling over and the clear plastic tent side started blowing in from the strong winds. I got a little worried that wind would blow so hard that chairs outside would fly around or the tables inside the tent would start moving. What I didn’t know was the worst was yet to come. As soon as I started thinking about the tables, the tent took flight and smashed on the ground about 10 feet behind us. The wind was blowing so hard I couldn’t breathe when I faced the storm. In a matter of 10 seconds we were totally drenched. My Grandma and I started heading immediately for the exit. I looked back to make sure my Aunt & Uncle were behind us, and found them trying to hold down the table cloth on the table where we were sitting. I then thought, I am heading straight for the car and I’m taking Grandma with me. They can find us there. No table, chair, fencing or tent is going to take me out today. The rain stopped about 5 minutes after that, but damage had already been done. The rest of the air show was cancelled and we headed for home. Click
here to view some footage (first 2 videos) of the last act before the storm and during from one of the local new stations WHNT. This is a good look at what I got to see. The tent the camera person was in is not the same type of tent I was in. I was in the Huntsville Air Port’s tent which was bigger, better and had air conditioning. They didn’t have the clear plastic side on the smaller tents. All tents did have the chairs outside and the white picket fencing.

After we left, the rest of the evening was uneventful. We all took a quick shower to warm up, ate dinner and watched City Slickers on TV Land.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow- what a weather event. I'd imagine a person wouldn't feel very safe being protected only by a tent which could blow over any minute. Glad to hear you're okay!

Marie

Corinne said...

holy moly!! i'd be so freaked out (yet oddly mesmorized by the strange weather as we've done so many times watching it come in at the office in Roseville). I'm glad the rest of the day was uneventful but geeze Katie!!! what a day!!