wild weather today

we had planned to have breakfast and then swim before leaving, but the weather report made me rethink our plans. I hoped that by leaving earlier, we would hit the storms before they had gotten stronger. Maybe that’s true or maybe not, but we had some wild weather.

In Louisiana, the clouds started to get denser and greyer and lower. Eventually, we hit the rain. The pouring rain. The rain that even with the windshield wipers on top speed, you can only see 30 feet ahead of you. The rain that makes even the most aggressive drivers slow down to 40mph, and the meeker drivers down to 25mph. The rain in which poor visibility and slick roads inevitably lead to accidents. We spotted at least four such accidents in Louisiana, one being a jacknifed tractor trailer which had stopped all traffic — headed the other way.

In Texas, the weather improved for a while, but then we saw a cloud line. West was a sunny, clear day. East was dense clouds. A sharp line separated the two. I hoped that we would stay on the sunny side for the remainder of the trip, but we were not so lucky. In Temple, we were tossed into a storm. Hail, visibility down to ten feet. I panicked for a second, then decided getting off the highway and under cover at a gas station was the best bet. I managed to get us off the highway, but the gas stations were crowded with other folks who had the same idea. Then I realized that people were stopping in every cross street under the elevated highway, so we joined the crowd and watched the storm. My mom, 60 miles away in Austin, reported sunny weather and 90 degrees. We had hail, flash floods and 65 degrees. What a difference!

Finally, the rain let up and we carried on, though the access roads were under 6-12 inches of water….what a splash!

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