And now with the ride.
We got to the ferry and they were just about ready to leave. We looked north and there was a huge cold front moving in very quickly and it looked totally dark, it was only around 5:00 pm. We met a couple with a ’56 T-Bird from near where we lived and we were discussing this monster storm coming in VERY fast. He said that the car leaked a bit in the rain, I could only imagine how much it would with this rain coming.
All the cars ahead of us said that as soon as they got on the ground ahead, they would let us get ahead of them, which they very graciously did for us.
The sky was getting even darker and the lightening was starting to appear more frequently.
The road away from the river to highway 79 was about 3 miles. The road on the Missouri side was also very narrow, but blacktop all the way but runs through a major flood plain. I would think a couple weeks ago that this entire area was under about 3’ of water, but yesterday the road was “just” above water level.
I high tailed it and was scaring my wife the way I was riding on the blacktop as there were lots of 90° sharp turns and some of them were still covered with flood plain debris. I did slow down a bit and then we got out into the open. We heard later that there were 40 to 50 mph winds associated with the very large cold front and storm.
The road was basically east / west and the winds were from the direct north. This road was no different, blacktop and very narrow, just enough room for two cars to pass each other.
We look out at ALL the water and the road with no rails. The water was starting to surge from all the wind and water levels in the fields of probably only a couple feet. The pictures you see about hurricanes smashing again the piers and water flying up, that’s almost what this looked like.
We started across the road in the fields and thought that we were good to go. A bit further we had water splashing up on the right side of the road, our side, we were heading west. This was not too bad because I could just scoot over to the left lane and make it through. Then the water started to run across the whole road surface.
Just around another slight curve in the road we looked further ahead and there were whitecaps across the road, just like in the news clips. My wife again shut her eyes and just hung on tightly. The winds was directly from our left at 40 to 50 mph and alone it was blowing us all over the road, let alone having to negotiate the road and flowing water over it.
We got to the area of whitecaps over the road. I was in the left oncoming lane, no traffic to deal with. When I started to hit the water, I had about 100 yards of what I thought would be just an inch or two over the road. I looked down and the blacktop was all broken up under the water and was very rough, probably an inch or two up/down chunks. When I got to the whitecaps, the water got deeper. I had water at my running boards. Figured I’d hit it a bit to keep my momentum going.
The water started to spray from the front tire and all the water to the right blew right back onto us. For about 10’ to 15’, the water got a few inches deeper and the water was spraying very hard with all the wind. I’ll have to admit that I was a bit scared at this time, but I kept going through.
About the time I hit the end of the very deep water, the motor stalled out. That was about underwear changing time for both of us.
I had enough momentum to get up out of the very deep water and it was only a few inches deep at that point. I kept trying the started and finally it fired back up. I think that I soaked the air filter and that’s what choked out the motor. If it had been water on the ignition, I doubt that it would have restarted that quickly.
We made it through that and only had a couple other water crossings. I suspect that the water from a few weeks ago had washed out that spot pretty bad. I imagine that it was mostly do the wind and the storm surge creating all the rise in water level on the only thing for miles blocking the water’s path.
We hit 79 and started south. It was totally dark over top and the traffic was not going much over the 60 mph speed limit. I was hoping that we could out run the storm. We got a few sprinkles on 79. But what my wife and I noticed was that in about 1/2 mile the temp went from the 70’s back into the 90’s as we drove out of the cold front leading the storm cell.
We had about 8 miles to head west on I-70 to O’Fallon MO. Just as we were getting off 70 we started to get a few very large rain drops. We had about 1 mile to get home. We got in the garage and about 10 minutes later the sky let loose with some major rain and wind.
I’d say we were very lucky yesterday and I rode like a fool and I probably shouldn’t have, but it ended up good.
Sorry for the rambling, but I had to share this. I know some of you guys are in my area and will testify to the intensity of the storm yesterday evening.
Thanks for reading.
Author
Topic: I'd Like To Share The Ride From HELL!!! Pt 1 and Pt 2 (Read 2414 times)