When the Weather Beats You!

Well I made my regularly scheduled trip across the state this week. I left the night before I would have normally in an attempt to beat the severe winter storm that was bearing down with winds up to 50 MPH.

Well I didn't make it out as early as I would have liked and about half way through the trip I ran smack into the worst snow storm I have ever driven in. I was driving a generally unlit interstate and it was all but invisible. Fortunately I have made this trip a number of times before and had a good feel for the contours of the highway. This might have helped me if I could have consistently seen more than 20 feet down the road. No such luck.

It was snowing so hard with such a heavy wind that there was about 30 minutes (out of 2 hours) that I literally felt like I was driving in a cloud. I could not see anything. I would just coast and wait for it to clear enough to give it some more gas. I probably would not have finished the trip that night if it weren't for the ambulance in front of me. They had high headlight type lamps on the corners in the back of their truck and had them on. This allowed me to see through the frozen fog. They must have had similar lights in the front that allowed them to see further down the road than any of the other cars or trucks were able to.

In fact the ambulance was so comfortable driving in the storm that they almost lost me at times. When they pulled more than a quarter of a mile ahead their lights would begin to dim in the snow. I would speed up slightly to keep up with them. We passed a number of cars in the ditches on either side of the road. These were the unlucky (or stupid ones) the lucky (or smart) ones were often to be found sitting on the shoulder. I can only imagine that they didn't have any confidence driving in zero visibility. I don't blame them. If it weren't for that ambulance I would surely have been one of them.

In the end the ambulance took me almost all the way into town. A lesson that I learned along the way is be careful about following someone blindly. If they drive off the road you are likely to follow them.

When I got checked into the hotel and turned on the TV to decompress I saw a weather update. The weatherman, who exuded a weatherman's storm buzz like a doppler radar signal, announced that we were experiencing "near blizzard" conditions. Obviously he had not been out driving before he recorded THAT report.

The joke around the office (at least in my head) was that I left early to beat the weather, but the weather beat me instead.