Towing in the wind.

They (the Casita factory) suggested a propane station in Ennis to fill our tanks and recommended the BBQ restaurant next to it for lunch. By the time we found the station, it was closed for lunch, and the cold front had caught up with us. It was 12:15 and the sign said that the shop would open at 1:00. We went next door to Bubba’s BBQ and got take-out and had lunch in the Casita.

We watched the clouds get lower and darker and the rain get heavier. At 12:45 an LPG delivery truck pulled into the station and a little old guy got out and limped over to us, knocked, and asked if we needed propane. He said that someone had called him and told him we were waiting. He wanted to get us fueled before the electrical fireworks started. In the half our or so that we had been there, the temperature dropped 30 degrees.

I called my sister and had her pull up a live Doppler radar website and give me a briefing on where the heaviest thunderstorm cells were. We drove through Ennis and headed back to her house on 287. The rain at times was so heavy it was hard to see and the winds were reported as 30 mph gusting to 45 in the Waxahachie area.

The little Casita behaved beautifully and I caught myself driving 60+ several times even though I was trying to drive conservatively. We did hydroplane several times and the wind blew the Pathfinder and Casita sideways across the highway as one unit.

By the time we got to Midlothian, the rain and wind was so heavy and the creeks were flooding over the highway so I decided it was time to hunker down for a while.

I called my sister and she told me that we were in the worst of it at the moment and that we had a shot at beating the next heavy cell if we left as soon as possible.

The rain let up a little and we hit the road again. We heard on the radio that DFW airport had been shut down due to tornadoes spotted nearby. I told my California-native wife to keep her eyes out for cyclonic action and pressed on. I’d spent most of my early life in Texas and Oklahoma and had yet to see a tornado but always wanted to…now was not the time for that. We’d paid for a whole egg, not an omelet.

As we hit the outskirts of Ft. Worth, the worst was behind us and the death toll was five or six. It rose into the teens the next day.