Storms Enroute to Dallas

Our travel day on May 2 was one of our worst ever - and we've traveled a lot. It was going to be a long day under the best of circumstances. We were driving from Oxford MS to Dallas, over 500 miles, to stay with family friends.

We knew that the Garmin was routing us on state roads instead of interstates for the first 100 miles, but we thought that was okay. It had worked fine for us the day before, on our way into Oxford. Our first mistake was not checking the weather forecast on the Internet before setting out that morning. If we had, we may have been smart enough to take another route. Lesson #1: always check the weather before setting out.

As it was, we encountered some of the worst weather I've ever seen. First the torrential downpours caused flash flooding on the back roads we were taking. There was one place shortly after crossing the Mississippi where we had to just keep moving forward hoping the car didn't stall. After that, we were never sure if we would run into a place where we had to turn back, effectively being stranded in rural Arkansas. Lesson #2: only take back roads in good weather.

Once we made it to the interstate, we were caught in stop-and-go traffic for five different accidents. The weather was treacherous, and one accident often caused another as cars tried to stop in the wet weather and poor visibility. We traded off driving several times, trying to stay alert.

Then we heard on CNN, over satellite radio, that there were tornadoes east of Dallas - right in our path. At this point, we called Sally, our friend in Dallas, to have her check the weather radar and tell us what we were heading into. For the next couple hours, Sally was our 'eye on the sky', and at one point we had to seek refuge in a Lowe's until the hardest downpours and a potential tornado passed over us. I asked the Lowe's employees (who were very nice) what their emergency tornado plan was; they didn't have one.

Finally, we thought we were in the clear to reach Dallas before the next band of storms hit. But at nine miles out the lightening became so severe I was ready to pull off and find shelter again. The lightening was everywhere, hitting straight to the ground, one even touching off a large blue fireball, probably from hitting a transformer. I was driving and wanted to stop, but Steve said no, just keep going, we're almost there. I pulled the cover forward over the sunroof, to lessen the flashes from the lightening (only from all sides now, not from above as well!), leaned forward to try to see the edges of the road, and drove the last miles - really, really frightened. I'm glad my dad doesn't have Internet access, because he'd really be upset with me if he read this. He raised me to know better than to be out on the road in this kind of weather.

Then we made it to our destination, and went inside -- leaving the car to be unloaded hours later, when the storm relented a little. Had a couple of beers. And were very glad the plan was to spend three days in Dallas, and not drive the whole time we were here. The rain gauge the next morning said the area had received five inches of rain the day before, and we had struggled with every inch of it.