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North Dakota Blizzard
As I was driving through the eastern part of Montana, my new boss Jake called to see how I was doing and also warned me to be sure to check the local weather on the radio because a big storm was expected to roll into the area from the north. The wind had been blowing hard most of the day, around 35 mph, but since was mostly a tailwind, I hardly noticed it. Around midnight I arrived at Bismarck, but decided to at least press on to Jamestown, about 100 miles up the road. I checked the road reports as best I could on my phone but didn't learn anything that particularly concerned me, so I was expecting business as usual. 15 miles beyond Bismarck, I was rocketing along in the darkness at 80 miles an hour as I had been the entire 12 hours of my voyage. Bizarrely, a 200 foot-long lightning bolt exploded in the distance about a mile up the road, about 500 yards to the right of the freeway. As I was pondering this strange phenomenon, I noticed what looked to be a 50 foot tall fog bank on the freeway ahead, but something didn't look right. I drove into it at full speed and immediately realized I was in a blizzard. Instead of being a tailwind as it had been the entire day previous, the wind was blowing squarely across the freeway, from left to right. I hit the brakes pretty hard. Within a quarter mile, I had to pull off the road entirely, I couldn't see a thing. Nothing. Just white.
Stopping on the shoulder of the freeway, I assumed that I should at least keep moving as much as I could to hopefully drive out of this predicament, but quickly realized couldn't even see the white fog line that invariably accompanies the right side of the road. Very un-nerving. As the car moved, I could occasionally hear the rumble strip under my tires, so I tried to navigate in this crude manner, but even craning my head far over the dashboard hoping for a better look at things, there were no visual clues at all as to my location, or speed. Because of the intensity of the storm, there were no visual clues as to where I was positioned on the road or even a reference point as to how fast I was going. I had to look down at the speedometer to see if I was even moving. Shortly afterward, trying to make even a small amount of progress, I felt the right side of my car rumbling through dirt. I had run off of the road. I hit the brakes and stopped completely, putting the car in reverse, hoping for the best. Sure enough, thank God, I was able to back out, back onto the pavement. I put the car in drive, and at about the same moment, a semi came up behind me, braking hard, and passed me. Had I not been on the shoulder it would have hit me for sure. The semi leveled out at about 5-10mph. I thought this might be my way out, so as he eased by me, I gingerly pushed on the gas pedal and followed him. As we drove, the storm worsened to the point that even he had to come to a dead stop right there on the freeway, twice, because of zero visibility. We plodded along precariously, and after many miles of anxiousness in the wake of his oft braking tail-lights we finally passed some of the worst of it and made our way out into some visibility. With about a mile of of the road now visible ahead, we made our way at about 40 mph. Not long after, we hit more of the blizzard, with winds again around 35 mph I'd estimate, and eked along at 10 mph. Out of the darkness, we passed a car that had stopped, contemplating a way out of the storm, poised at the beginning of an exit ramp, the ramp itself socked in with snow and drifts. I thought they would follow us out straightaway but somehow they did not, disappearing into the darkness in my rearview mirror. They wanted out. I was also looking for a way out. A poor decision indeed, but seemingly without any other option, I used my phone to check for hotels while trying also navigate the threatening roadway, hoping to find any sort of civilization, to at least be able to pull off and ask for advice about this unusual and threatening dilemma. Horribly, as evidenced from the freeway signs advertising "no services" at each exit ramp, it turned out that we were in the sticks. A perfect place for a blizzard at midnight. Miserably, I eventually ascertained that the closest exit with services was at Jamestown, 29 miles away, a real live eternity at an average of about 25 mph in a whipping, frigid storm. Again a clear patch presented itself with about a mile's worth of visibility. In that stretch, a sign announced that there was a rest area two miles ahead. Thank God! When we got there the truck I was following also took to the rest area, presumably to wait out the storm. I looked over at the parallel rest area across the freeway, only to see another semi pulling off with a big 4 wheel drive pickup exiting as well. The road ahead must be just as bad, I estimated, if they were getting off too. I parked with a sigh of relief, and thought, at worst, I could just idle for the rest of the night in the relative safety of 0 mph, sitting in my sleeping bag with the heater on. Looking down at my gas gauge, it stared back at me reading 1/8 of a tank. I could never last the night there without running out of gas. It didn't take long for me to decide I had to head out for Jamestown. No choice. Briefly after this decision, a UHaul with a pickup truck following it passed the rest area, so I put the car in drive and attempted to slowly catch up to them. Once positioned behind them, the blizzard started again. Off and on. Slow, a little faster, slow again, brake lights, icy road, blizzard, yuck. We passed a car in the ditch. Full blizzard. I thought about stopping for them but realized I could be imperiled myself by doing so, so I called 911. They said they'd send a deputy out to them. 20 miles to go. I was counting every mile, painfully. From about the time the semi showed up, my mind was doing many odd calculations. With freezing temperatures and the 35 mph wind and snow, to park the car and wander off (for whatever reason) would mean almost certain death. This was very clear, and it was an odd feeling. Likewise, crashing the car into the ditch and rolling over was basically close to the same end. If someone didn't find you right away, get a blanket over you, and hail an ambulance to your location immediately, freezing to death was likely, especially complicated with any injuries. Help would also be a good distance away and have to drive the same painstaking route you did. Yikes. Weird. A weird thing to think through. Should I have stopped the car and backed up to the nearest exit as soon as I drove into the storm? Way too late for that. Should I have waited with the car that stopped on the freeway hoping to negotiate the exit ramp, and followed him up? Probably not, but here I was. I thought if anything else, I just had to keep the car on the road, no matter what. No crashing into the ditch. No more looking at the phone. I continued to follow the UHaul and pickup truck, in and out of the storm, until they passed another pickup truck. This truck was going quite slow, but I didn't want to risk passing it. 10 miles to go. The storm wasn't raging in this area, but the road surface was treacherous. I continued to follow the truck, and judging from its slow pace, I estimated that it would also exit at Jamestown, and sure enough it did.
With a Huge Sigh of Relief, I made my way to a gas station, and then headed to the nearest hotel. In front of me at the desk was a woman, and thinking I recognized her truck idling in the parking lot, asked her if she had just been driving eastbound on the 94. She said yes and gushed her anxiety recalling the journey. I mirrored her sentiments and mentioned the car in the ditch. She said that she had seen the accident and had been right behind them when it happened. I had indeed been following her truck for the previous ten miles to Jamestown. With her transaction at the desk complete, we parted ways. Somewhat later I went back to the desk to ask a question of the clerk. In front of me was a man and a woman. After they left the clerk, recalling my previous conversation with the lady I had been speaking with earlier, mentioned quietly, "I think those are the folks you saw that went into the ditch." I passed the couple while headed back to my room and asked if they had just been headed eastbound on the 94, they said yes. The woman was crying. The next morning I learned that shortly after we all exited the freeway, the state had closed the full 100 mile stretch of the 94 we had just traveled, from Bismarck to Jamestown. The closure lasted until the afternoon. Also that morning, I called a fellow in Minnesota whom I had been in contact with about renting a studio apartment, wanting to express regret that I wouldn't be able to see him that afternoon as planned. He said it was no problem, stating that the previous night had been the "weirdest" of his 15 years living there. Looking out the window of his house the previous night, he said that he could only see white, with winds gusting to 60+ mph. He said that he had laid in his bed all night listening to his house shift back and forth, also hearing things banging into his home from the blowing wind outside. "Makes you really feel alive," he said at the end of our conversation. Amen to that. As it turned out, the top wind gust in North Dakota that night was 72 miles an hour, about 65 miles south of where I was driving. Hurricane winds are designated at 75 mph. Investigating the weather online at the hotel, I learned that the winds on route of the freeway between Bismarck and Jamestown that night were at times around 50mph. Makes you really feel alive. Makes you really feel alive. Related Articles: |
ecently, I heard about a three month seasonal job in northern Minnesota
that interested me greatly. I made a couple of calls to the company
offering the position and decided it would be worth the risk to drive
from my home in Oregon to see if I could officially land the job. The
first day of the drive, I made it to Missoula, Montana, 750 miles from
my house. The next day, I left Missoula at about noon, but with 1,000
miles ahead of me, I didn't know how far I'd make it, but estimated
I might at least make it to Fargo, North Dakota.
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