A Fantastic Little Corner

So... Last night was pretty scary. Ta-da: Storm Journal Entry #3!

My job is located out away from the city; it takes at least 10 minutes of beat up back roads from any direction to get to it. All night long in our Night Teams Chat, we'd been discussing the impending tornadic situation, each secretly wondering what would merit them shutting our site down for one or two hours for our safety. Well, they really should have done the two hour thing, because those back roads? They were flooded. There was no warning posted anywhere either, meaning we were in it before we knew it was there. 

When we were leaving, I asked Terri if she wanted me to drive; she said she wanted the experience in a heavy T-storm since she hasn't driven in that for a long while, and I told her even then that I didn't think this was the right storm to practice in. Still, she insisted, so we went off into the downpour. Normally, we'd have waited it out, but we didn't want to be caught in the hail. Plus, it was just heavy rain, right? No big.

We didn't realize how much trouble we were in until we couldn't see. 

It took us a moment to understand why we couldn't see anything: the mansions along the roadway had no electricity. No street lamps. No other cars on the road. It was completely pitch black. What made it worse was that the rain was coming down in sheets, which not only dramatically decreased visibility, but reflected our headlights right back at us: we could barely make out what was a car length ahead. 

Then we hit the first flooded part - about three inches of water stacked up on the road and Ter's alarmed, "Jacks...?!!"

We were faced with three options: 1) Turn back immediately 2) stop in one of the neighborhoods and wait it out or 3) drive through it. 1 & 2 had to go out - the road was too narrow and flooded on the edges to safely turn around, and the neighborhood streets were all lower than the road. We were at the highest point, so I told Ter to get in the middle: I told her we needed to get off the road immediately, and that was a one-way trip.

The road was desolate. Debris from the sides floated along in the general inch of water that covered even the best of stretches. The only time we could see anything was when the sky lit up with lightning. It was like driving through a very thick fog - except that it was water. The pace was agonizingly slow. My job was to talk Ter through it and keep her steady. We went about 10-15 the whole way, not willing to go any further unless we could make out the the lines on the roadway. 

This worked. Until we hit the mini mudslides.

Construction has been in full swing for a large segment of the road - they're building more houses, and the new houses that have been built are built up on higher ground. That higher ground was saturated, sliding all across the road. We couldn't see through the murky water, having to judge by where we were to where the ground had to be underneath it. We flipped out only once - when we ended up about 4.5 inches deep, and I told Ter to just go: if it got deeper, we were already screwed. The end of the roadway was just ahead - though we still couldn't see it. We should have been able to see any sign of life and light, but there was nothing. Just oppressive pitch blackness and lots of water.

We made it to the end of the road, and by then we'd figured it out: that whole section of the city had lost power. It was another mile or so after the winding road that we ran into electricity again. I made a quick call back to my manager at work and told him about the road so he could warn everyone else. 

After that, it was mostly smooth sailing. Getting on the freeway was particularly difficult as it started pouring again, but we were okay. Took about an hour and forty-five minutes to get home, but we made it. :) And Ter's super proud of herself, as she should be.

Of course, she says she couldn't have done it without me, which I know is true. I would have done it without her, - and might have ended up in a ditch or even dead! So all in all, it's a good thing we work together! ^^