All that to say, Southerners do panic - and it is ridiculous. And, in the city we live in, the weather people don't get it right often. We are surrounded by mountains which makes it tricky (or so I am told?). I have lived here for 30 years and they have always struggled. So, I do not know if that is common for weathermen, or if that is just common for our area?
There have been a few times this past year the weatherman have called for snow and ice, school has been cancelled early and no bad weather has hit. Well, today was different. We were told there would be a light dusting around 10, nothing to worry about. There would be much worse weather about 90 miles South of here.
Well......
It hit further North than expected. At 10:30 we got a text from school for everyone to pick up your kids. Apparently, everyone else in the city got that same message.
Jason was working local and was at Lowe's 10 minutes from the house when the text came thru so he was going to come home and get the van and would go get the kids. No big deal. Then he would go back to work. Or, so he thought.
We live in a hilly neighborhood and in that short amount of time it had already sleeted/snowed enough that he could not get his truck into the neighborhood. So he walked home to get the van. At that point, we decided he should get the Harris kids too so that Heather didn't have to get out into this stuff too.
So, he headed to school. And it took him two hours to get there. Mostly because of a wreck on the interstate. No one was prepared, so the salt trucks that we do have were not even prepped. The interstates were not even clear.
He finally got there, but the interstate was so bad he didn't want to go home that way - it goes up a huge ridge to get home and he could see people sliding down while he was on his way to school. Another way home would have been preferable, but the news kept saying it was closed - do not go that way!!! Later, we learned it was how Gary got home and we wished we did not listen to the news, wondering if they were salting it at that time? So Jason chose the third option, which appears to be the option that everyone else choose. And it only took him FIVE HOURS! With 8 kids in the car!!!!
I truly was not worried about their safety, just worried about his sanity. I was extremely thankful he filled my van up with gas that morning, but I had wished he had grabbed his phone charger (I was only talking to him on a limited basis) and the stack of blankets I had for him, just in case.
So, when he finally got close, he still couldn't make it home and had to get everyone out and walk the rest of the way. I had to run downstairs and snap a picture of the crew finally walking in the driveway!
Seven Hours - could have made it to the beach in that amount of time!
No comments:
Post a Comment