Magnolia Beach Birds and other Airborn Excitement

Roseate Spoonbill

 Quiet little spot on an inland waterway across the bay from Port Lavaca. This camping area is open to the public with free camping right on the shell covered beach, and a beautiful wetland just behind us.

Crested Caracara

Starting to look ugly out there

Reminds me a little of Jamestown Beach back home with a few scattered houses except they are all on stilts about 12 feet in the air. We settle in, get out our bikes, and do some exploring.

The marsh here has a small flock of Roseate spoonbills. So beautiful. Amazing pink colors. Also many hawks and herons. A sighting of the Crested Caracara too. (Photos stolen from web. My camera is not that good) Warm and sunny and very few bugs. Calm before the storm?

We are the blue dot, the pink box is the tornado warning area

 The next day the weather takes a detour. Thunderstorms form in this part of Texas with warm gulf air meeting cold air coming down the plains. Can't see them on radar until they are right there on top of you. Hard to predict. This part of the 'coastal bend' usually gets the worst of the weather. So it starts to get ugly around noon and by about 2 pm we are hearing the thunder and the lightening across the bay. Quite a show even in daylight hours. We check our radar maps and see that we are on the lower edge so it is forming north of us and looks like it is moving north and extending all the way up to Ohio. Wow, that is a big line of storms! We are indoors reading and cozy watching this storm. Then about 4pm it engulfs us too. We look at the radar again and see that we are in trouble. Constant thunder and lightening strikes all around us. Then a searing whistling sound, loud electrical crackles, blinding flash of light, percussion that rocks the van. Wow, not a direct hit but very, very close to us. Not so much fun now. Raining hard but still hot so we have to close windows and it makes us steamy even in our shorts and t's. We sit tight, unplug everything, turn off phones, and watch nearly constant bolts all around us.

By 5 pm the main bolts finally passes a little although there is still constant lightening. I turn on the phone (love that Iphone) to see the NOAA Radar again and see a tornado warning. Shit. It is 12 miles from us, but arrows show it is heading away from us ... then other arrows show adjacent storm cells going the other way. Storms are swirling around. Now what?

 Steve jumps out and quickly loads the bikes in case we need to make a fast exit. We can leave the other stuff behind if we need to. We get out maps and try to see where we might go if it moves our way. Nothing. We are about 25 miles from town and that road swings into the direction of the tornado watch anyway. It's dark. Most of the houses around us are vacant this time of year and up on stilts with no first floors. We decide that the concrete bathroom building a few hundred yards away, while small, and without doors, is our best evacuation plan.

We are not in a panic, but are not being stupid about this either. Other folks here on the beach too in various RVs, but with lightening and the dark there is no communication between us. No one dares venture out.  Since this is a free camping area there are no hosts or authorities around so we are on our own. We get out our weather radio and tune in the storm alert warning system. We wait. We watch. We sit in the dark and talk about the light show. We wait some more. We check the NOAA site again and see the tornado warning has been extended again. But now it looks like it is moving away from us to the south into Aransas Wildlife Refuge and then out over the water. Phew. We relax a little. We wait. Another 45 minutes passes and NOAA lifts the tornado warning. Lightening continues to move off a little farther south over the gulf and we see the sky lighting up for the rest of the night but the thunder is distant.

Exciting.
Good for our adrenalin production.
Clears out the sloggy spots in our circulation systems.
But don't want this level of excitement again.

We talk to one of our neighbors the next morning, he is about 300 yards away, and he says the big bolt hit behind us and in front of him. Too close. Don't think tornadoes are normally a big problem in this area, we see lots of hurricane evacuation plans to go way inland, but no tornado shelters. And we have not seen any tsunami warnings anywhere here. Guess that is just a west coast thing.

Weather is warm and sunny again the next morning just like nothing ever happened, and we stay for a few more days. Heading west again to see Aransas Wildlife (tornado ground zero) and the wintering whooping cranes and camp at Goose Island for a few nights. Maybe another Clash of the Titans thunderstorm coming on Sunday night, but we hope to be back on Padre Island by then. It seems to be a little like Sequim, with a blue hole, and the storms moving around it.
We hope.