Thoughts of LoWriter

My Death Defying Drive

For those of you who don't know, I went up to see my parents this weekend... and drove back yesterday in the terrible storm. Yes, that's right. I was in the middle of it just as it was getting warmed up. And I was pretty convinced that I was going to die.

I got to Detroit Lakes just as the sky was starting to get really dark and ominous looking, but I had come down 59 and thought I could see the edge of the storm, so instead of waiting in line for the cheapest gas on my route, I kept going, thinking I could outrun it. This is because I am an idiot. It was actually coming from the south west, not straight from the west, so the edge that I saw was not as close as it looked, and it was not the end of the storm bank I'd seen all along HWY 59, but the beginning of another storm bank moving up.

First, it got pitch black. Then it started pouring. Next, the wind came up. Eventually, the rain was streaming across the highway in a straight line, branches were coming off the trees and swirling in the wind above the highway, and the radio started announcing tornado warnings for Ottertail county. I was pretty sure I was in Ottertail county (and I was right). I pulled over, and I didn't see another car anywhere near me. I thought about the line of dark clouds behind me that I would have to deal with all over again and kept driving as soon as I saw another car go past.

Finally, I could no longer see to drive at all. Also, I couldn't keep the car on the road. I pulled over about 200 yards in front of a van that had pulled over. The wind got higher. The radio said the wind was reaching speeds of 80 miles an hour. It roared and began shaking my car. I'm not talking football player shaking, I'm talking angry "I'm going to throw your car in the ditch or possibly send it to Oz" shaking. The rain looked and sounded just like the inside of a car wash, and I prayed like crazy because I couldn't see if a tornado was coming or what. Lightening was shooting down all over the place. I sat there shaking and jumping at every noise as the whole car began to feel like it would be tossed off the highway. After a long time, the rain and wind lightened a little (just enough to see), and I saw a semi and another car drive past and I got behind them. I refused to lose them. However fast they went, no matter how dangerous I thought it was, I stayed on their tail. And I finally got to Wadena just ahead of the worst of it.

The streets had water in them, so I drove in the turning lanes. All the signs were swinging from their posts. Branches were blowing in the streets. When we got out of town, I was still behind the semi and suddenly, I saw something blue breaking into pieces and blowing through the ditch and onto the road. It was a door!! An entire door flying over the highway. Later on the radio, they said that the streets were entirely flooded, that all the stop lights were out and that there were power lines down in the streets all over town so that you couldn't get through, so that's how I know I beat the worst of it to Wadena.

I kept driving and listening to the radio and I followed that semi to Staples (where yard signs were blowing through the streets) and then I followed another. At some point, the radio said that the tornado warning for Ottertail county had expired because that funnel cloud had moved into Todd county. They said this just as I crossed the Todd county line, and the wind was still roaring.

At some point, it must have passed me up either to the north or the south because when I got to Twin Pines gas station (the second cheapest gas on my route), I asked what county I was in and if the storm had passed through there and they said it had. The wind was definitely lower and the rain had lightened. Also, the storm beat me to the Twin Cities. I came in on the tail end of it, so I got more of the pouring rain, but I didn't get the heavy winds again.

Needless to say, this was possibly one of the scariest drives of my life. I have never been in anything like it, especially the shaking car. I'm used to pretty high winds and snow, etc., having grown up in NW MN, and I've had to hold the steering wheel tightly to keep from blowing off the road in the past, but I've never been through anything like this in my whole life.

My advice? If you hear it's supposed to storm and you're a long way from home, call in sick to work and leave later. It was so not worth the risk for three hours of work at my night job. That was all I could think while the car was shaking and the wind was roaring: I'm going to die out here because I had to get back for my night job. If you are out on the road when a storm hits, I have no idea what you should do. They say to get in a building away from the windows and stay there, but if you're between towns when it hits, this doesn't do you a whole lot of good. I think outrunning it was a good idea in theory (although you're never supposed to do this in the case of a tornado) because otherwise, I would have just caught up to it again because it was only going 45 to 50 miles an hour while I could go 70. Additionally, if you can see, is it really worse to be driving than it is to be sitting on the side of the road? I probably should have stopped in Staples and let it go around me. Maybe letting it go past and going a little slower would have been the wisest course of action in this case. At any rate, I lived through it all in time to work some more because that is, apparently, what life is all about in my world anyway.

Posted by LoWriter at June 21, 2005 08:45 AM