Crazy weather

So last night I was driving home from the seacoast.  It was late and I probably should have just stayed over -- but I had things to do here today, so I left there sometime after 11:00.  It was a completely uneventful drive, with a handful of yawns here and there, but overall, nothing remarkable.  I was approaching the last stretch when I literally drove into a wall of water.


Charlie had texted me shortly before I left and asked if the roof was on the Jeep.  I had decided to put it on earlier, when we were going out to dinner, because the sky looked a little funky.  I didn't bother with putting in the back and back side windows because it was so nice out and I really didn't expect it to rain.  He said there was thunder and lightening there and I just assumed it would be gone by the time I got near there.

Yeah, back to that wall of water.  There was what looked like heat lightening in the distance off and on throughout the drive, but nothing I would classify as major lightening.  No thunder.  Then all of a sudden it was as though I passed through a curtain and it was raining SO hard, it was shocking.  I turned on the windshield wipers as fast as they go and slowed down to about 30 miles an hour.  It had gone from 100 percent visibility to zero in a nanosecond.  It was so incredibly freaky, and then all of a sudden the whole world lit up with lightening and those lines, like in the picture above, were EVERYwhere.  I swear, the hair stood up on my head.  Not because I was hit, but because WHAT THE HELL AND WHERE DID IT ALL COME FROM?  I hadn't seen flashes of lightening in a while, and now I was suddenly surrounded by a big ass thunderstorm, BABOOOOOOOOOOM.  Let me tell you, it was pretty damn loud in that open Jeep -- the rain was totally hitting me because it was like being in a car wash, the noise was impossible to describe, between the thunder and the rain jamming down upon the canvas top, and the windshield wipers going at a frenetic pace ... I was sitting up with both hands on the wheels just peering out at the road.  What road?  I couldn't see any damn road.  I could see fog and rain, rain everywhere, and then those eerie snaps of lightening which lit up everything in this crazy blue light and I thought, this is a fricking horror movie and the person watching it is screaming at the crazy woman in the open Jeep what the hell are you doing on a deserted highway after midnight?


A thunderstorm would be the last thing to throw me, but this had a violence to it that was disconcerting.  That, and not being able to see and having brief thoughts as to whether I was protected at all, since it FELT as though I was outside, all added up to me feeling a little less than confident that I was in a good place.  As I creeped along, I wondered if it would ever end.  And the closeness of the lightening freaked me out -- those lines everywhere, in front and on the side, I am telling you, I was wondering what the hell I would do if I went off the road.  You know, because I COULDN'T SEE THE ROAD.

By creeping along very slowly, I followed the white line.  It would disappear in the fog, but when the lightening came I could sort of re-orient myself to the right hand side of the road.  It was hairy.  And it went on for a good 15 miles.  I couldn't get off at the exit I would normally take because I couldn't see anything and without the white line it would be impossible to continue.  And I couldn't pull over because that didn't feel safe AT ALL.  Not on any level.  It would have freaked me out worse!  Though now that I am writing this, I could have gotten off the highway and gone under the bridge and taken a breather!  But no.  It was now 12:30 in the middle of the night and the world had gone crazy.  I wasn't stopping!  There was not another soul on the highway that entire time.  When I got off the exit a cop flew by me going in the opposite direction as me.  I wanted to say TAKE ME HOME!   Then I thought, maybe he will turn around and pass me and I could follow his lights! But nope, had to adjust to driving without a white line ... and then little by little the rain began to abate.  Three miles out from home it was a normal rain storm and a normal display of thunder and lightening.

I'd made it through .... THE TWILIGHT ZONE.