Three years ago I was driving us back home after a weekend trip when we hit a belt of storms. It was awful, you guys -- the worst conditions I've ever driven in. Visibility was terrible, so bad that I was afraid to pull over to the shoulder. I could easily imagine someone drifting over the white line without realizing it, and smacking into our van as we attempted to wait it out by the side of the road. I was also afraid to get off of the highway. We were driving through an area that had experienced persistent flooding that summer, and I didn't know what I would find if I left the interstate. It seemed worse to exit into a potential flash flood than to keep crawling forward on the interstate. There was another van a bit ahead of ours, and I kept her taillights in sight. Selfishly, I thought, "If there's flooding on the interstate, she'll get to it before we will and maybe I can keep from driving into it."
I kept thinking the worst would end soon. How wide could this band of storms really be?
It must have been pretty wide. It went on for a long time.
Let me reiterate: it was awful. Four of the kids were in the car, and the weight of my responsibility to keep them safe in those conditions felt immense. Alex was doing a summer internship away from home, and I was thinking about him too. Would he look back on 2015 as the year his whole family died in a flash flood?
As you will have deduced, we avoided the flash flooding. I followed that other van's hazards out of the rain and into watery sunshine, and made it home safely, thanks be to God.
I was kind of traumatized by the experience. The following summer I had been planning to meet up with my roommates in Chicago, but when the day drew closer there were severe thunderstorms in the forecast. Nope, I said, have a nice time without me. Last year my parents were planning to come for Stella's First Communion. THUNDERSTORMS, I said. It's going to storm the whole way. I didn't even want other people driving in bad weather.
Last night my mother was looking at the weather forecast for our trip today. Scattered storms, she said. The first 85% of the trip was totally uneventful: no traffic, minimal construction, no kid squabbles. I got into that long-distance driving zone and cranked out the miles. And then I noticed that the clouds looked forbidding enough for me to flip on the radio. Were we about to drive into a tornado warning?
There was no tornado warning, but there were buckets of rain accompanied by lightning and thunder. When my windshield wipers couldn't quite keep up, I stopped for gas. I was prepared to hang out at the gas station until the storms blew over, but when the rain slowed down we hit the road again. Fifteen minutes later we hit another bad patch, bad enough that we pulled off the interstate to join a line of cars with their hazards on, also waiting it out on the exit ramp shoulder. (No services close to the exit, low visibility on the interstate.)
As you will have deduced, we lived to drive another day. And maybe, I hope, my not-entirely-rational fear of driving in thunderstorms has abated. We are home, gratefully.
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