We’ve seen a lot of things on this trip, but nothing as crazy as the “Utah Apocalypse”. Talk about some crazy weather! Here’s the blow-by-blow.
Tyler and I entered Utah mid-morning yesterday, and we spent much of the drive debating where Utah would fall in our state ranking. It’s got some stunning vistas, but it’s also got long periods of … nothing. Just dessert, no houses, no towns, no wildlife. Just mile after mile of monotonous dessert.
For me, the stunning vistas put Utah up around the #2 or #3 spot (currently occupied by Massachusetts and New York). It’s not as spectacular as Colorado (which is #1), but it’s still got lots of “wow” factor.
Tyler, though, feels strongly that the monotony factor drags Utah down near the bottom of the list, only slightly above Ohio.
As we debated this, Mother Nature apparently decided to weigh in. It appears that she thought putting on a spectacular display of weather would tip the balance in Utah’s favor, and I’ve got to say, she sure did put on a show.
Late in the day, we were just 55 minutes from our final destination for the night, having put seven hours behind us. It started to rain, lightly at first, but quickly shifting into a torrential downpour. We had to slow down to maintain some semblance of visibility, and many cars were pulling off the road to wait it out. Soon we noticed that the rain was bouncing off the hood – hail! Small hail stones at first, but that quickly morphed into big hail stones. I continued to drive through it, but there was a moment or two when I wondered if those hail stones were big enough to crack the windshield. That’s about the time that I started wondering where we could get some shelter, but this being the dessert, there’s no where to hide.
Suddenly traffic came to a halt. We sat there getting pelted with hail, unable to see what was causing the stop. As we waited, we noticed that a river had formed on the shoulder, and an even bigger one had formed on the median. The median river was very close to overflowing onto the road. As we watched it grow, we both remembered the flash flood warnings that we’d gotten an hour before. Huh. I guess they meant it.
We were sitting in a good position on the road, relatively speaking. We were on a down-slope that bottomed out just a ½ mile below us. Watching that river in the median, we suspected that traffic might be stopped because of a flash flood just ahead of us. But visibility was lousy, so we couldn’t be sure.
We waited. A police car went by in the breakdown lane. We waited some more. A tow truck went by in the breakdown lane. This shored up our theory that a flash flood had occurred. I thought maybe some cars had gotten stuck in the flood and needed to be pulled out. So, we kept waiting.
The hail let up, and then the rain lightened, and then it stopped. The sun came out. And we kept waiting.
We used our meager cell phone signals to search for info – would the road be closed? Would they turn us back? Was there an alternate route that wouldn’t add hours to our trip? After hitting the “search” button several times, I finally got a result. The Utah DOT issued a tweet saying that Route 15 was closed in both directions right at our location. No further details were provided, so this wasn’t much help. Keep in mind that there was no option – we couldn’t go forward because of whatever mess was in front of us. We couldn’t turn around because there was no way we could ford that river in the median without getting stuck. So, there was no choice but to wait, however long it took.
While we waited, I spent a great deal of time thinking about that last rest area, the one with a long line at the Ladies room. The line that I’d decided not to wait in. Remember, this isn’t New England. I can’t step behind a tree on the shoulder, because there are no trees here. Nothing but scrub brush so scrawny that it won’t hide anything I’d care to hide. So, I crossed my legs and hoped this wouldn’t last too long.
We amused ourselves by watching our GPSs try to figure out what was going on. First they said there was a 12 minute delay. Then it said 30-minute delay. Then it said it found a new route for us that added 2 hours to our commute. Then it went back to a 15-minute delay. On and on this went, with the poor devices doing everything they could to guess what was going on. Obviously they didn’t know anything more than we did.
After 40 minutes, the traffic finally started moving. Very quickly after we started moving, we saw a newly formed pond on the median, which clearly had spilled over onto the roadway, confirming our flash flood theory. Right across from the pond, a car was off the road, stuck in the mud on the shoulder. Could she have been pushed off the road by the water? It was our best theory for a couple of minutes.
As we crept along at a snail’s pace, we saw another car off the road, stuck on the shoulder. And another. And then a couple stuck on the median. Could all of this be because of the flash flood?
No, as it turned out. The real cause was… SNOW! We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw copious quantities of snow all over the road. Glancing at the thermometer, I confirmed what I already knew: the outside temp was 62 degrees. What the???
When I tell you there was snow, I mean there was SNOW – a good two inches of the wet, slushy kind that you get on a warm spring day. Except that this happened on an August day when the temperature was over 60! As we got further up, I saw plows headed to this location. Yeah, there was that much snow!
Don't let this photo fool you. We were so stunned by what we were seeing that we nearly missed getting any photos at all. As it was, Tyler snapped this one when we were already past the worst of it.
All told, there were about 7 cars off the road, all of them stuck either in mud or in snow.
We picked our way through the mess and continued on. Just a mile up the road, the sun was shining and the roads were dry.
Crazy.
Tyler has dubbed this event the “Utah Apocalypse”. OK, it wasn’t quite apocalyptic, but honestly, if a swarm of locust had suddenly descended on us, it wouldn’t have been a shock.
This incident has nudged Utah up a little on the state ranking list, since there is nothing like a weather apocalypse to chase away the boredom. If we’d been just a few minutes earlier through that area, Utah might have been nudged down a little in my ranking, since I hate driving through snowy conditions. But as it was, we came through unscathed and with a great story to tell, so the whole event goes in the plus column for Utah, as far as I’m concerned.
Utah, you sure do know how to throw a party.
Kimba
Utah Pics
© Kimberlee Martin, 2021. All rights reserved.
Comments