New Digital TV
Baseball & tennis ball size hail
Tornado AlleyThe USA completely switched over to digital TV on 12 June this year. In Australia analogue and digital are both available in free to air TV. This will continue until 2013 when only digital will be available. What this meant to us was that the two analogue TV's in our RV would no longer be able to pick up free to air channels. We would be able to connect and watch cable TV, but if we were in a campground with no cable TV, then we would have no TV reception.
Consequently, when we took our RV out of storage this year, we arranged to have a digital converter box fitted to the main TV. Usually the only time we use the bedroom TV is when we get cable channels and watch a late chat show, so we didn't worry that it would not pick up local TV channels anymore.
However, the first day we were in a campground for the 4th July weekend, our main TV just died. We were connected to cable TV and were watching a show at night, and the TV just went black, no noise, no flashing lights, nothing. Fortunately having cable meant we still had the bedroom TV so we were able to get regular weather alerts etc. When we got to Council Bluffs (across the river from Omaha, Nebraska) we booked the RV in to have a new 22" digital, flat screen TV fitted. At the same time, we had the digital converter box connected to the bedroom TV. So now we are fully converted to digital. In place of an old, very, very heavy analogue TV, we now have a slim, lightweight, flat screen TV. Perhaps some portion of the purchase cost will be offset in time by reducing our total weight and hence a positive affect on fuel consumption! Wishful thinking??
There have been some pretty horrendous storms on our route in the past few days. We saw some nasty purple skies on our way to Council Bluffs, and sure enough, heard they had 1.75" rain a few hours before we arrived. Then the next day we were in our campground on the border of Iowa & Nebraska in South Sioux City watching the evening news and heard they had tennis ball size hail in the area to our north where we were headed the next day, and where we were on the banks of the Missouri River, a flash flood warning was in effect. When we woke in the morning we saw dark angry clouds to the north, and predictions of baseball size hail...I can't even imagine hail that size! I found a photo taken in 2007 of baseball and tennis ball size hail in Fargo, North Dakota, not far from where we spend 4 weeks each visit. As we continued north, we saw one cornfield almost shredded - obviously hit by hail. Adjacent fields looked untouched. There was a lot of water lying around in the fields, and one of the main rivers was overflowing into the surrounding area.
One of the perils of this RV lifestyle is our exposure to storm activity. You feel relatively safe from storms in a brick house (although if I lived in a tornado or hurricane prone area in the USA I would have a good basement), however in our RV we feel very vulnerable. Our visit to North Dakota always coincides with their tornado season. Did you know that most tornadoes in the state occur from 3 PM to 11 PM in the months of June, July and August. About 1,214 tornado's happen in the United States each year compared to about 100 a year in Canada, and 90% are associated with thunderstorms. Scary for me.
I can't imagine what those hail balls would do to your RV you two. That is scary. It is also scary thinking that you might be lulled into watching those nice new TVs while driving. Don't you dare! I hope you avoid those storms or skirt them. If you need a nice warm nest to retreat to, there's always your room at the Saur B&B. And it's going to get warmer! Take care. Hugs, Marie
ReplyDeleteTrish I'm still reading the blog, atleast once a week not so good with the emails. The photo of the hail was great imagine the damage those ROCKS would do they are hugh.
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