Having a wild time!!!

So, onto my summary of Memorial Day... what a day! I gathered up Mini-Dew and her 3 friends and we were off to Wild Adventures, a local amusement and water park. The girls had a great time riding on the various rides, and I followed them around, occasionally riding to fill a spot where one or more didn't want to ride something. The weather started out perfectly, blue skies, fair weather cumulus sparingly scattered amongst the sky,... but I knew the forecast and the summer-like pattern of regular afternoon thunderstorms, so I kept a watchful eye on the sky, as the field of cumulus build into towers and started to really fill in the sky, heavy with nimbus. As that occurred, I warned the girls that if they wanted to get over to the water park and ride the new Wahee Cyclone (seriously, a weather related water park ride!!! Honestly, I wanted to ride it!) ... then, we would need to head on over to the water park portion of the park before the storms arrived. ... "just one more ride on black foot falls????"... "just one more time on the bridge...???"... so, by the time we got over to the water park, it looked like this, and the first lightning came while the girls were in line for the Wahee Cyclone. The bottom fell out and lightning strikes were blazing all around us... the specific cell impacting us had pea sized hail potential according to Jay and Alabama Mike, and the lightning strikes were 15 in 30 minutes... or about 2 in five minutes... In the above shot, the lifeguards are establishing a 6 foot perimeter around the water, while the one lifeguard is not so wisely standing in the water... during a thunderstorm... bottom right.No matter what kind of pull I had (Rick works first aid in the water park, and was actually working at that time...), we couldn't get them to open the water park for the 20 remaining after the lightning clearance, so the girls missed their shot at trying out the Wahee Cyclone, and so did I. Mini-Dew actually gave Rick "the hand" for not having more pull. They did open the rest of the park though, and the girls were content to keep riding the rides. Though he couldn't get the water park to open back up for us, he was instrumental in hanger procurement. Thanks, Rick. You helped my wonderful groom tremendously.

Leaving the park was actually my favorite part of the day... there was some amazing thunderstorm structure on the horizon. The girls really razzed me about stopping 10,000 times along the way home to shoot that... oh well.Here's a random shot from while we were at the park, which my wonderful groom suggested I share with coke... How about this for a coke commercial... ??
In other news, looks like the guys at the SPC have added an area of slight risk for severe weather to parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee and a tiny sliver of Illinois. I am sure Vortex2 is all over it!

Have a fab day!
~Dewdrop