According to the Weather Channel, it was the deadliest U.S. storm system of 2015. And we were right out in the middle of it.
::
The drive down to Abilene was (mostly) uneventful. We left on Tuesday after spending the morning packing up (and making sure the kids had a list of phone numbers in case something happened to us.)
It's a two-day drive, two nine hour days with one overnight stop in Springfield, Missouri. We had audio books to keep us entertained, when we weren't just chatting. The weather was perfect, the roads were dry and in relatively good shape, and the traffic wasn't particularly bad.
[We had one little "adventure" in Oklahoma City when traffic stopped rather suddenly due to a left-hand exit which had become backed up, and I was forced to test the anti-lock brakes on Cheryl's car. They worked! In fact, they worked so well that I was able to bring the vehicle to a controlled stop in an incredibly short distance. Between two lanes of traffic. It was an incredible adrenaline rush! Unfortunately, it only made Cheryl more nervous than usual about my driving. As if that were even possible.]
The air was so warm and delightful when we got to Texas on Wednesday. Got there in time for some dinner (lasagna!) and the usual mid-week service at the church. Went home for ice cream and visitation time, then to bed for a much-needed rest, after being on the road for two days.
We kept our eyes on the forecast the whole time we were there, knowing that warm air just doesn't hang around very long in the middle of winter, and, sure enough, the weather prophets started yammering about a big storm coming in. Unfortunately, it looked like the storm would be coming in right about the time we were needing to leave for home. And it would be covering roughly the same ground.
We'd been planning on leaving Sunday after church, but our route would've put us right at the edge of the ice storm making its way across the southwest. So we bugged out early, at the crack of dawn, and drove lickity-split towards Fort Worth on I-20 and then up towards Oklahoma City. But the storm was coming awfully close in, and we did not like the idea of driving across all those overpasses in OK City with the rain water turning to ice; so we took some side roads to keep as far east as possible, then turn up north to catch I-40 east (instead of I-44) until we got to Fort Smith, then north again on I-49 to I-44, which we would take all the way up to Springfield, our first stop.
It was a rough drive. We may have gotten ahead of the ice, but the rain was with us the whole time, and it was a hard, driving rain which obscured the view and made passing all those trucks very, very stressful. There were a million trucks. And the visibility was just horrible. Not only that, but our little detours extended the trip quite a bit; we ended up spending nearly twelve hours on the road that day.
We rested somewhat in Springfield, but morning came too soon and it was time to hit the road again.
The situation for Monday wasn't much better. The storm was still moving east, the frozen portion of it crawling slowly across the plains. We just tried to stay in the rainy part, ahead of the ice. We'd much rather be driving in the pouring rain than the deadly ice.
But, oh! what a pouring rain it was! The constant pounding of it on the car, the never-ending chorus against the windshield, the thrumming in my head like a thousand tiny hammers. And the spray from the trucks which rendered my eyes completely useless every time we came close to them. Sometimes the only part of the road I could see was the yellow line on my left.
We decided to avoid Chicago completely, owing to the wintry blasts which were heading that direction, and instead planned our route through Indianapolis and Fort Wayne in order to stay in as much of the warm air as possible. It was hard, though, because we ran into all sorts of flooding-related delays in Missouri which put us behind schedule, and by the time we got to Fort Wayne, it was late and the road reports from Michigan indicated that the roads were ice-covered and dangerous.
So we stopped for the night there in Indiana with only three hours distance between us and our home. Three hours of darkness and snowfall and ice.
It would be much safer to finish the trip in the daylight, with time allowed for the road crews to clean up the mess.
And so it was. We woke up after a restful evening and got on the road by 6:30 a.m. and arrived at our house by 9:30, without having encountered any problems. The roads were cleared, the sun was out, and we were finally home!
:::
It's hard to describe the feeling of driving at speed when you can barely see the road. Sometimes it feels like one is using "The Force" to determine where the edges of the road are; sometimes it feels like the world is going to end in a fiery crash in the next second, and every moment in which I find myself still alive is gloriously euphoric ecstasy. Experiencing this sensory overload is tolerable in small doses, but it tends to wear out its welcome after hours and hours of the same thing. By the end of each day of our trip, my brain was completely fried, my eyes dried out from all the straining to see what could not be seen, my ears ringing from the sound of the pounding rain, my hands worn out from constant clenching on the wheel. There was never a rest so appreciated than the one found after a full day of travails such as this.
I would like to think that God had a hand in the whole thing, but it is difficult to ascribe Godly intent to the success of one particular individual (or family) when so many others did not survive. That seems a bit presumptuous. Nonetheless, we appreciate the prayers of our friends and family for our safety.
::
The drive down to Abilene was (mostly) uneventful. We left on Tuesday after spending the morning packing up (and making sure the kids had a list of phone numbers in case something happened to us.)
It's a two-day drive, two nine hour days with one overnight stop in Springfield, Missouri. We had audio books to keep us entertained, when we weren't just chatting. The weather was perfect, the roads were dry and in relatively good shape, and the traffic wasn't particularly bad.
 |
| The Route to Abilene |
The air was so warm and delightful when we got to Texas on Wednesday. Got there in time for some dinner (lasagna!) and the usual mid-week service at the church. Went home for ice cream and visitation time, then to bed for a much-needed rest, after being on the road for two days.
We kept our eyes on the forecast the whole time we were there, knowing that warm air just doesn't hang around very long in the middle of winter, and, sure enough, the weather prophets started yammering about a big storm coming in. Unfortunately, it looked like the storm would be coming in right about the time we were needing to leave for home. And it would be covering roughly the same ground.
We'd been planning on leaving Sunday after church, but our route would've put us right at the edge of the ice storm making its way across the southwest. So we bugged out early, at the crack of dawn, and drove lickity-split towards Fort Worth on I-20 and then up towards Oklahoma City. But the storm was coming awfully close in, and we did not like the idea of driving across all those overpasses in OK City with the rain water turning to ice; so we took some side roads to keep as far east as possible, then turn up north to catch I-40 east (instead of I-44) until we got to Fort Smith, then north again on I-49 to I-44, which we would take all the way up to Springfield, our first stop.
 |
| The Return -- Trying to Avoid Goliath |
It was a rough drive. We may have gotten ahead of the ice, but the rain was with us the whole time, and it was a hard, driving rain which obscured the view and made passing all those trucks very, very stressful. There were a million trucks. And the visibility was just horrible. Not only that, but our little detours extended the trip quite a bit; we ended up spending nearly twelve hours on the road that day.
We rested somewhat in Springfield, but morning came too soon and it was time to hit the road again.
The situation for Monday wasn't much better. The storm was still moving east, the frozen portion of it crawling slowly across the plains. We just tried to stay in the rainy part, ahead of the ice. We'd much rather be driving in the pouring rain than the deadly ice.
But, oh! what a pouring rain it was! The constant pounding of it on the car, the never-ending chorus against the windshield, the thrumming in my head like a thousand tiny hammers. And the spray from the trucks which rendered my eyes completely useless every time we came close to them. Sometimes the only part of the road I could see was the yellow line on my left.
We decided to avoid Chicago completely, owing to the wintry blasts which were heading that direction, and instead planned our route through Indianapolis and Fort Wayne in order to stay in as much of the warm air as possible. It was hard, though, because we ran into all sorts of flooding-related delays in Missouri which put us behind schedule, and by the time we got to Fort Wayne, it was late and the road reports from Michigan indicated that the roads were ice-covered and dangerous.
So we stopped for the night there in Indiana with only three hours distance between us and our home. Three hours of darkness and snowfall and ice.
It would be much safer to finish the trip in the daylight, with time allowed for the road crews to clean up the mess.
And so it was. We woke up after a restful evening and got on the road by 6:30 a.m. and arrived at our house by 9:30, without having encountered any problems. The roads were cleared, the sun was out, and we were finally home!
:::
It's hard to describe the feeling of driving at speed when you can barely see the road. Sometimes it feels like one is using "The Force" to determine where the edges of the road are; sometimes it feels like the world is going to end in a fiery crash in the next second, and every moment in which I find myself still alive is gloriously euphoric ecstasy. Experiencing this sensory overload is tolerable in small doses, but it tends to wear out its welcome after hours and hours of the same thing. By the end of each day of our trip, my brain was completely fried, my eyes dried out from all the straining to see what could not be seen, my ears ringing from the sound of the pounding rain, my hands worn out from constant clenching on the wheel. There was never a rest so appreciated than the one found after a full day of travails such as this.
I would like to think that God had a hand in the whole thing, but it is difficult to ascribe Godly intent to the success of one particular individual (or family) when so many others did not survive. That seems a bit presumptuous. Nonetheless, we appreciate the prayers of our friends and family for our safety.
1 comment:
So grateful for your safe trip! I've had a couple of hours of gripping the steering wheel, trying to navigate through blinding rain, but can only imagine the stress of two days of it.
Post a Comment