cvz_finezt

so yea i was driving back from el paso last night seeing the wife and the kids, on my way back to Ft. Hood. Normally under good conditions it would be a 7 1/2 to 8 hour drive. But since i ran in to a huge texas sized thinderstorm, took me a bit longer... lik 9 hours and 45 minutes. i drove through some bad weather b4 but this was to say the least one of the worst. As i left el paso, the sky was just partly cloudy and i was rolling along on I-10 east, i come over the hills on the east side of el paso and all i see is black clouds from about Sierra Blanca all the way out east. and this was about 5:45ish or so in the afternoon. so thinking nothing of it i keep rolling east and the rain starts picking up. real easy at first and spirts od downpours hear and there. so me being falling back on my own experiances and military safety coarses, i slow down to about 60-65 mph. taking it easy since i wasnt in much of a hurry. but everytime i find a rut in the road from the damn semi's my *** end would start coming out from under me, cuz of the water collected from in them, by the time i reach ft. stockton its night and itts pitch black, and the rain it heavy, so i top at a gas station and chill for about 20 minutes to see if it lets up a bit. and it does. so about 40 minutes east of ft. stockton i take the highway 190 cut-off and it stops raining, so i roll the windows down and just cruise. but i look up into the sky and there is still lightening and thunder going on around me, but no rain. so about half way between Iraan and Eldorado is where i run into some big trouble. all of a sudden it starts raining like a biblical flood. the wipers are pretty much inaffective to say the least and i cant see more than 15 feet in front of the car, and the only way i can see anything beyond tht is when lightening would flash. so i'm driving and i hit dips, puddles tht just cause me to slip and slide all over the place. and mind u i'm going lik 35mph now. and out of the corner of my eye when the lightening flashed this time i saw not one, nor two but three, yes i said THREE funnel clouds and u can see the the clouds moving in all different directions. and i was thinking to myself ... well more like praying. " Please God, let me make it through this alive." And needless to say the wind was just as bad, then it starts hailing on me too... just what i need right. strong winds, hail and oh yea funnel clouds... great making for disaster on a highway with about 100 miles of road between towns. so yea the pucker factor was extreamly high in my case. but the weather continued like that til San Saba. then it was just drizzle for the most part. i'm so glad that my family wasnt with me last night. cuz God-forbid something would have happend and they would have gotten hurt ya know. but thts how my sunday night was.

raubt

Did the hail damage your car?

phunnyguy

lil red 1 mama nature 0

cvz_finezt

no the hail didnt do any damage, it wasnt big hail stones,

phunnyguy

i travelled for years and had many a night like that....scary glad to hear you and red made it ok......

SOHCman

Glad you made it though OK!

I'm glad I don't live in Texas, too much EXCITEMENT!

Whew!

The closest thing I've ever had weather-wise (not blizzards) was way back in 93.

Coming out of upstate NY with my 92 F150 (300ci straight 6) with an 8' bed full of books (school sci-fi club closed and I got the library's books). Tarped, but exposed (no cap).

We stop for gas (sun shining) and the wife goes to the little girls room. I turn around after filling the tanksand my jaw drops.

As she slowly strolls back and I point frantically behind her. She turns and the sky is BLACK, the darkest black I've seen short of night!

She books for the truck (no pun intended) and off we go with a whopping 150hp.

We outran that storm 300+ miles to our house, pulled under the carport, and the wall of water came down! The driveway was flooded in 2 minutes, 3 inches deep in 5.

Damn, I love Fords!!!

SOHC

cvz_finezt

damn thts bad. from where the storm started to where i found a break in it was almost 500 miles, yea i drove through half of texas, not a fun drive when its nasty outside and my lil car is being subjected to 50+mph gusts of side winds and down bursts. i lost my cell phone signal for about 300miles, and my wife was going crazy sinceshe couldnt get a hold of me. and when i finally got a signal, she was crying, cuz she thought something happened to me. thank god nothing did. but i learned my lesson. next time i'm going to stick to the interstate and forget about the back roads.granted they may be faster in nice weather, but at least on the interstate i dont have to worry about the road being under water too much, and besides if i had the cash, i would have rather flew back to austin and had a friend pick me up and take me home. but hopefully the next time a nsaty storm comes around i'll be far from it.

deutscherstang

Texas could possibly be the best place to live ever, and the best place to drive a Stang...DFW area rules.

afixer

how long have you been at fort hood? a fwe yaers ago i was in el paso doing a scean for "Day after Tomarrow" we had a bunch of you guys and gals for extras some tanks and some blackhawks. i did the FX on it lots of snow!

cvz_finezt

i got to Hood back in july of 05, but b4 tht i was in germany from december 02 til may 05. really funny story. deployed from germany to iraq in january of 04 and came back early march of 05, then i PCS'ed to Hood where i was and still am assigned to a unit tht left for iraq again in December 05 and we came back this past november, and are already looking to leave again before the year is out. yea the wife isnt too happy about the who situation. but this is our life, and my azz re-enlisted for 3 more years back last august when i was going to get out on the 31st of march. this is actually the stop-loss date tht was put on me to i could deploy( not by choice mind you). so if i wasnt going to be deployed i would have been out in july of 06. and yea i got a bonus, 10k for 3 years, but all tht went to bills. go figure huh, and a nice lil vacation to disneyworld. so it wasnt all tht bad. thank god the car is paid off, but we now have a new Explorer to pay for now. she has her '00red and white drop-top stang, and i got my 05 coupe.and i love the explorer too. thank got for the DVD player in it. keeps the kids quiet on long trips. and tht 3V aint no punk either, we get pretty good gas mileage on it too, and tons of leg room too.