Thunder driving

So I'm phobic about driving in the rain.  I don't know if I've mentioned this before.  A little rain is okay, but I don't like when the road surface starts getting all puddly and the backs of cars start spraying walls of mist.  I don't like that.  The first makes me afraid of hydroplaning, the second blinds me.  So when it starts drizzling, I always really quickly pray that it won't get worse--except for when I know it will.

I left a little late for my husband's this week due to a conference I had to go to for a class.  You might have heard about the crazy storm that went through the Carolinas Saturday, or even experienced it for yourself.  I drove through it.  I left thinking that I would miss most of the rain except for one thin strip of the storm, and that was exactly what happened, but good grief was that "thin strip of the storm" the most terrifying thing I've experienced in a while.  Even when I set out from Durham there was a lot of wind, but you could keep straight with small steering correction going 75.  80 was a stretch.  As I came toward...um...Salisbury?  I began to leave the normal "hey it's rainy weather, so I'm gonna be light gray" sky and was sprinting at 75 MPH toward "you know, you maybe shouldn't be traveling in this direction" dark gray angry sky.  Occasionally there were forked bolts of lightning in the distance.  It was all very foreboding.  Meanwhile, I'm listening to happy pop music on the radio (partially in denial of the worsening situation and my rising anxiety), and unfortunately that music is periodically interrupted by "BEEP.  BEEP.  BEEP.  ANNNNNNNNNNNRRRRRRRRGGH  The National Weather Service ..." telling me about new tornado warnings in counties that sound adjacent enough that I should be worried (but that I don't know where exactly they are).  Because I am beginning to freak out a little bit, I keep calling my darling every twenty minutes.

Husband:  Hello?
Me:  Hi honey, do you know where Davidson County is?  There's like a tornado there or something.
Husband:  Well was that Davidson or Davison County?
Me:  I don't freaking know!

As you can see these conversations were always highly productive.

By this time, all the sky around me is the doom gray color and the wind is picking up, and it's beginning to drizzle.  I start thinking of what I'll do if I see a tornado looming ahead coming at me.  Well, I could exit and run to a McDonald's.  I could pull off and hide in the forest, or in a ditch, but I don't see any ditches, they always tell you to hide in ditches, why aren't there any ditches?!  I could stop, cut across to the other side of the highway, turn around, and run away from the tornado, but that's not feasible since there are dividers, and even if there were a highway patrol pathway I would lose time since they're always so curvy.  I decide that exiting would be the best option.

The rain gets heavier.  I'm getting toward Thomasville, where I hear the **** is hitting the fan.  In fact, ahead, I could see swirls of "OMG the **** is hitting the fan" sky, the color of which looks about like this:

My best approximation.  Note that skies are usually not gray-green, except for in movies where there is really bad weather or an alien invasion.

All of a sudden the rain gets really hard.  Folks slow to 45 MPH, then to 30 MPH.  I turn on my fastest wiper speed (the one where it looks like the wipers are also panicking..."We're trying Allison!  We're trying!  But this rain is too much!").  Fast forward thirty seconds and everyone is going 2 MPH.  All I can see are the tail lights of the guy in front of me (who I had the sense to get close to earlier).  The rain drops are really really big splattery ones that go PAT when they hit, and the rain is falling in these weird waves where occasionally there is a second where you can see.  So here we all are, bound together by our courage and stupidity in facing this weather, staring hard at each other's tail lights with vision for the most part completely gray with rain and occasionally getting half-second flashes of vision of relevant things like the sides of the road (obviously I was in the far right lane) and other vehicles.  We marched forward bravely at 2 MPH.  Then people started turning off.  One by one, people formed a line on the right side of the road, until the guy in front of me left.  The sad thing is, so many people had pulled over that I was actually able to continue for a while just going to the left of all of the cars on the side of the road, even though I couldn't see the road at all.  If they had randomly decided to park in the grass, I would have run off the road.  Finally it got to the point where most people had already pulled off and my guideline to the right was gone, and I pulled off behind a big truck to wait.

I cut off the wipers, and you just couldn't see through the rain.  It was falling so hard and so thick that all you could see were tail lights.  I called my husband to pass the time, but after about two or three minutes, the rain started thinning, and people started pulling back on.  I eventually decided to pull back on, too, which was stressful because I could barely see behind me and people were already going around 40 down the road.  We were able to go about 35 or 40 until the rain thinned even more to allow us to go 55.  I got behind a big U-Haul trailer with bright tail lights and stuck it out for another five minutes or so until the rain faded away and I could see light down the road.  It seemed like we drove from the depths of hell immediately into a mural on a daycare wall.  The weather seriously looked like this:

"Aw come on, you did NOT just brave the worst storm you've ever driven through, you are so silly..." mocked the sky.

Since I was low on gas, I stopped in at a gas station / mechanic to fill up and get some talk therapy ("Did you see that rain?"  "Yes ma'am, it was raining so hard here you couldn't see anything..." and so on).  As my husband and that mechanic had promised, I had no more rain all the way to Atlanta.

The good news is that although I believe that storm may have taken a year or two off my life, there is now no more pollen on the car.