Five Observations from a Southerner About Driving Through a Blizzard
This Thanksgiving, my mom told me to be safe driving back to Minnesota from Kentucky. There was apparently a winter storm system moving through the Midwest. Living in the North for the past year and a half, I’ve been lucky with road conditions. The one time I had to drive in heavy snow on the highway, I was able to park myself behind a plow and stay golden for most of the drive. However, this year, I managed to get stuck driving on the interstate in the middle of a blizzard during the most busy driving day of the year.
For my fellow southerners, a blizzard is not just a term tossed around for lots of snow. In a normal snowstorm, those drifts are scraped off the road by the plows, and you can go on your merry way. A blizzard is a storm with considerable snow and 35 mph or higher winds, limiting visibility severely. When blizzards occur, road conditions deteriorate quickly because the wind blows the falling snow and picks it up from the ground, creating large drifts on the road.
Not only was there a blizzard on this fateful Sunday after Thanksgiving, but the whole ordeal began with freezing rain. Layer this over snow, and you have six hours of driving through Illinois and Iowa that should have taken two (at the end of six hours of regular old driving before that). Needless to say, it was a stressful 12 hours of driving, ending with an unexpected stay overnight in a hotel to avoid another four or five hours on icy roads in the wee hours of the morning.
After this ordeal, I thought I’d give y’all my observations on driving through my first interstate-blizzard:
It’s shocking how quickly road conditions go from “I’m comfortable with cruise control on,” to “I’m going to go ten miles under the speed limit.”
Minutes after the freezing rain started, I pulled off the road to fill up with gas, knowing I wouldn’t want to stop once we hit the areas with snowfall. After getting back on the interstate, it was only ten minutes or so before I tried to pass someone and felt my car slide for the first time. I quickly abandoned the whole passing people idea, as in mere minutes, a thick layer of icy slush had accumulated in the left lane. Then, less than thirty minutes later, the freezing rain became snow and 45 mph winds, and the road was gone, visibility limited enough to need hazards on at four in the afternoon.
Why do people in tiny little sedans try to pass in the left lane? Do they not see their fallen comrades lining the shoulders?
Once we ventured into blizzard-proper territory, the roads were probably the worst I’d ever seen. Even I, in my Subaru SUV, was scared to deviate from the tire tracks of the car in front of me—and not for fear of trying, but because when I did, I could feel the instability of the ice-snow-slush. However, there were countless little sedans who would hop over in the left lane like impatient children who couldn’t follow the rest of the crowd. Not only was it frustrating for these people to be so impatient, but it was also problematic for the cars around them, because there was always a risk that these little cars would choose the moment they were passing you to lose control.
The greatest vindication for our annoyance at these people was when we would remark on the car passing us, then later notice it spun the wrong direction on the shoulder of the road, having paid the price for their recklessness.
If you have the most annoying hazards on the face of the earth, do not turn them on while going 15 mph during a blizzard.
The only moment in the entire six hours of blizzard driving that actually almost caused me to wreck my car in order to pass someone was when I got stuck behind a sports car with the most obnoxiously bright hazards of all time. These lights were so blinding, they even caused the semi-truck that was originally the buffer between me and the sports car to risk passing him in the left lane. I was never so happy as to see those obnoxious blinking miniature suns to disappear down an exit ramp.
It’s easy to develop a weird camaraderie with the cars you’re stuck with in these kinds of situations.
At the beginning of our blizzard adventure, a black pickup truck with distinctive headlights got behind us. This truck was with us almost the entire six-hour drive, and it was a little sad to part ways. And when the semi-truck that I had been trailing behind for almost the entire drive decided to pass that sports car when I couldn’t, it felt like a deep betrayal.
Maybe that’s an overstatement. But Kayla did compare the ordeal to war—soldiering through the storm together, watching your comrades picked off one by one, orange tape dangling from the side mirrors of evacuated cars along the road—so who’s really the dramatic one?
Finally, there’s nothing better than getting behind the plow at the end of that long six hours of blizzard-driving.
Those blinking lights were a miracle. I parked myself behind that plow, and I was home free, no longer forced to crawl along at 20 mph. Just watch out for the spray from the snow they’re lifting up, because when the wind catches it, it can completely wipe out visibility—even worse than the real blizzard.
By the end of the night, Kayla and I limped into a Culver’s—cold, tired, a solid sheet of ice on my windshield wipers and windows, packed snow built up around my tires—and decided to call it quits for the day. Us southerners were not made for such perilous and snowy forces of nature.
Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, don’t forget to hit the heart button down below!