Emerald Isle Vacation 2012–Day 1

The past week in central Virginia left me with as much desire to escape our home as it did to arrive on the Crystal Coast of North Carolina for our summer vacation.  Back home it was beginning to feel like God had selected the vicinity of Hanover County as his personal bullseye for thunderstorm target practice.  And I’ll tell you, he’s been on this week.  I don’t think he missed a shot.  Twice in one week storms rolled through that leveled trees and turned electricity into a luxury on the order of a yacht or a personal aircraft.  Bring on the beach!

So as we drove in on the main road to Emerald Isle this afternoon, I noticed the clouds around us darkening.  I thought maybe it was my sunglasses, so I took them off.  The world still looked black.  So I flipped opened my phone and took a look at the radar and saw a line of storms closing in on us.  I also read a message that alerted me to a severe thunderstorm watch for our area.  (As somewhat of a weather geek, I’ve got to tell you I will never get over the fact that I can use my phone to get the information I just described.  Amazing.)

We checked into our beach condo and got everything inside before the weather was overhead.  I turned on the television to get the latest.  Here is what I saw:

I now had confirmation of what I could see through our door as I looked out over the ocean.  The storms were rocking and lightning was everywhere.  I grabbed the camera and decided I should try to get some video of the excitement.  The crying you’ll hear in the background of the video is Ian, who thought my film was a very bad idea.  It wouldn’t be long before I agreed with him as much as I had ever agreed with him about anything.