Through Wind and Snow and Sleet and.......TORNADO??
Thought you'd like to hear about our exciting drive out to Utah.
Jared and I have been planning a trip to Utah for about 3 months now. In February, Jared's friend from BYU Rob Pyne suggested that we meet up in Utah this summer for a dirt bike rendezvous. He lives in Seattle, Washington. So we started planning our first real 'family' vacation in about 6 years. And Grant's longest road trip EVER!! We left on Tuesday, May 22nd, around 6:30pm and were determined to drive all night (taking advantage of the sleeping child) and get to Utah sometime the next morning.
Everything seemed to be going well, until we got about 2 hours from home and started seeing a HUGE lightning storm just ahead of us. It was cool watching the lightning popping around for a while, but then it started to get pretty scary. We finally hit the rain about an hour later and it just poured!! Jared had bought a GPS device with weather radio on it for our trip (which we were SO lucky to have) and we were listening to the weather alerts on it - severe thunderstorms, etc. when we heard that the county we were driving into was under a tornado watch.
Now for those non-Kansans, a tornado watch is when the conditions are right for a tornado to develop. When a tornado warning is issued, it means that a tornado has been spotted on the ground. The sirens in your town, county, etc. go off if your area is in the immediate vicinity or path of a tornado that has been spotted.
So we're driving along and all of a sudden, the rain got really intense and the windshield wipers couldn't keep up with it, so Jared slowed down to about 20 miles an hour and we were still having a hard time seeing out the windshield. Then the hail hit. We're talking quarter-sized-and-bigger pieces of hail pounding on the truck. Jared and I couldn't hear each other talking, let alone the weather radio (even holding it right up to our ear) so we were trying to find an underpass to pull under in order to hear what was happening. No such luck, since everyone else had the same idea and all the underpasses were already full of cars parked. So we pushed on a little further and decided to get off at the next exit if there looked to be any type of gas station or truck stop that we could pull into to find out if it was safe to continue. Needless to say we were both terribly stressed out and Grant's eyes were popping out of his head from the noise. He was pretty calm though, didn't cry or anything.
About a mile or so more, and we finally found an exit that was labeled for the little town of Ellis, Kansas (in the middle of nowhere) and got off the interstate. We pulled under the underpass (an ambulance happened to be parked there also) and listened to the weather radio say that a tornado warning had been issued for the town of Ellis and that a tornado had been spotted 4 miles south of town. Jared and I looked at each other and said "What should we do?" We watched as a steady stream of cars was pulling off the freeway in front of us and pulling into the truck stop just up the road.
We were thinking about pulling up in there and getting some more information from them about the storm's direction, when the tornado sirens started going off. Jared immediately put the truck in gear and we pulled into the parking lot and grabbed Grant, his blanket, and sippy cup and ran inside as everyone was taking cover in the restrooms of the gas station. That was their tornado shelter. It didn't exactly make us feel very confident, since a gas station with big semi trailers all over the place and underground fuel storage don't exactly make for a good combination (have you ever seen Twister?? - believe me, every scene from that movie went through my head).
There were about 20 people in the women's restroom and about that many more in the men's, plus a ton of others who were standing outside the doors because there wasn't any more room. They were pretty nice restrooms, actually. I heard lots of people on cell phones around me saying things like 'Yeah, I'm not going to make it home tonight and won't be in to work tomorrow because I'm stuck in a tornado'. Grant was pretty calm though. He kept his head on my shoulder and wouldn't look at anyone. I must have looked kind of pale and upset because one of the station employees asked me if I was ok.
We were in there for about 10 or 15 minutes when the sirens stopped and the station manager let us know that it was okay to leave the shelter. The storm was moving pretty much straight east, so anyone who was traveling that way was advised to get a hotel room for the night and not go on or to wait a couple hours at least. Since we were going west, we asked a few people who had just come from Colorado how the roads were that way. They said about an hour out, the storm was totally gone, but that we should watch for the hail, because there had been a lot of it and there had been at least one semi that had tipped over in the eastbound lane.
We decided to go ahead and go, so we got on the road quickly. It was still raining pretty hard for about 20 minutes or so, but then it stopped and we started to see piles, actually drifts, of hailstones along the sides of the freeway. Several cars had slid off the road in it and were stuck. There was also a lot of fog coming up from the road - it looked like dry ice due to the hail and the rain and warm roads. Pretty creepy looking. About 15 minutes later, the roads were fine and we went on our way. Grant fell asleep almost immediately - it was almost 11pm by this time - and he was exhausted from all the excitement. Jared made it until just outside of Denver before we switched driving. Then he fell asleep too.
Little did we know that our adventures for the night weren't over yet. After getting through Denver and starting up the mountain passes, I ran into a snowstorm almost immediately. The signs were flashing to beware of icy conditions and snowy conditions, so I wanted to put the truck in 4-wheel drive before I started going down the other side of the first pass. So I had to wake Jared up to make sure I knew how to do that (I don't drive the truck enough to know) and then he couldn't sleep anymore because I was driving in the snow! So we got over the first pass and it got a little better, but the Vail pass was even worse conditions - almost a white out and there were even snow plows out. Talk about stress! The temperature was hovering around 24 degrees and we were going about 35 miles an hour the entire time.
Once we got out of the mountains, we switched driving again in Eagle at about 5:00am. After that, we had good roads and made great time. We got to Grand Junction, CO at around 8:00am and stopped and let Grant have some breakfast and get out of his seat for a little while. Then we drove the last hour or so into Green River, Utah and were so glad to get there finally!!
Jared and I have been planning a trip to Utah for about 3 months now. In February, Jared's friend from BYU Rob Pyne suggested that we meet up in Utah this summer for a dirt bike rendezvous. He lives in Seattle, Washington. So we started planning our first real 'family' vacation in about 6 years. And Grant's longest road trip EVER!! We left on Tuesday, May 22nd, around 6:30pm and were determined to drive all night (taking advantage of the sleeping child) and get to Utah sometime the next morning.
Everything seemed to be going well, until we got about 2 hours from home and started seeing a HUGE lightning storm just ahead of us. It was cool watching the lightning popping around for a while, but then it started to get pretty scary. We finally hit the rain about an hour later and it just poured!! Jared had bought a GPS device with weather radio on it for our trip (which we were SO lucky to have) and we were listening to the weather alerts on it - severe thunderstorms, etc. when we heard that the county we were driving into was under a tornado watch.
Now for those non-Kansans, a tornado watch is when the conditions are right for a tornado to develop. When a tornado warning is issued, it means that a tornado has been spotted on the ground. The sirens in your town, county, etc. go off if your area is in the immediate vicinity or path of a tornado that has been spotted.
So we're driving along and all of a sudden, the rain got really intense and the windshield wipers couldn't keep up with it, so Jared slowed down to about 20 miles an hour and we were still having a hard time seeing out the windshield. Then the hail hit. We're talking quarter-sized-and-bigger pieces of hail pounding on the truck. Jared and I couldn't hear each other talking, let alone the weather radio (even holding it right up to our ear) so we were trying to find an underpass to pull under in order to hear what was happening. No such luck, since everyone else had the same idea and all the underpasses were already full of cars parked. So we pushed on a little further and decided to get off at the next exit if there looked to be any type of gas station or truck stop that we could pull into to find out if it was safe to continue. Needless to say we were both terribly stressed out and Grant's eyes were popping out of his head from the noise. He was pretty calm though, didn't cry or anything.
About a mile or so more, and we finally found an exit that was labeled for the little town of Ellis, Kansas (in the middle of nowhere) and got off the interstate. We pulled under the underpass (an ambulance happened to be parked there also) and listened to the weather radio say that a tornado warning had been issued for the town of Ellis and that a tornado had been spotted 4 miles south of town. Jared and I looked at each other and said "What should we do?" We watched as a steady stream of cars was pulling off the freeway in front of us and pulling into the truck stop just up the road.
We were thinking about pulling up in there and getting some more information from them about the storm's direction, when the tornado sirens started going off. Jared immediately put the truck in gear and we pulled into the parking lot and grabbed Grant, his blanket, and sippy cup and ran inside as everyone was taking cover in the restrooms of the gas station. That was their tornado shelter. It didn't exactly make us feel very confident, since a gas station with big semi trailers all over the place and underground fuel storage don't exactly make for a good combination (have you ever seen Twister?? - believe me, every scene from that movie went through my head).
There were about 20 people in the women's restroom and about that many more in the men's, plus a ton of others who were standing outside the doors because there wasn't any more room. They were pretty nice restrooms, actually. I heard lots of people on cell phones around me saying things like 'Yeah, I'm not going to make it home tonight and won't be in to work tomorrow because I'm stuck in a tornado'. Grant was pretty calm though. He kept his head on my shoulder and wouldn't look at anyone. I must have looked kind of pale and upset because one of the station employees asked me if I was ok.
We were in there for about 10 or 15 minutes when the sirens stopped and the station manager let us know that it was okay to leave the shelter. The storm was moving pretty much straight east, so anyone who was traveling that way was advised to get a hotel room for the night and not go on or to wait a couple hours at least. Since we were going west, we asked a few people who had just come from Colorado how the roads were that way. They said about an hour out, the storm was totally gone, but that we should watch for the hail, because there had been a lot of it and there had been at least one semi that had tipped over in the eastbound lane.
We decided to go ahead and go, so we got on the road quickly. It was still raining pretty hard for about 20 minutes or so, but then it stopped and we started to see piles, actually drifts, of hailstones along the sides of the freeway. Several cars had slid off the road in it and were stuck. There was also a lot of fog coming up from the road - it looked like dry ice due to the hail and the rain and warm roads. Pretty creepy looking. About 15 minutes later, the roads were fine and we went on our way. Grant fell asleep almost immediately - it was almost 11pm by this time - and he was exhausted from all the excitement. Jared made it until just outside of Denver before we switched driving. Then he fell asleep too.
Little did we know that our adventures for the night weren't over yet. After getting through Denver and starting up the mountain passes, I ran into a snowstorm almost immediately. The signs were flashing to beware of icy conditions and snowy conditions, so I wanted to put the truck in 4-wheel drive before I started going down the other side of the first pass. So I had to wake Jared up to make sure I knew how to do that (I don't drive the truck enough to know) and then he couldn't sleep anymore because I was driving in the snow! So we got over the first pass and it got a little better, but the Vail pass was even worse conditions - almost a white out and there were even snow plows out. Talk about stress! The temperature was hovering around 24 degrees and we were going about 35 miles an hour the entire time.
Once we got out of the mountains, we switched driving again in Eagle at about 5:00am. After that, we had good roads and made great time. We got to Grand Junction, CO at around 8:00am and stopped and let Grant have some breakfast and get out of his seat for a little while. Then we drove the last hour or so into Green River, Utah and were so glad to get there finally!!
posted by Jen, Jared, Grant, Jacob and Lottie at
7:40 AM
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