FLEEING THE TORNADO

After spending the night in the unlikely-named Glasgow, Montana, it was about a 110 mile drive to the North Dakota state line.  It would be an easy drive on the nearly arrow-straight state highway 2.  Commercial-free jazz played on the XM satellite radio and the cruise control was set at the speed limit of 70mph.  The weather had been weird for the past few days.  Storms chased me across northern Oregon and late May snows in central Oregon called for a mid-trip course-correction, so I was in Montana sooner than I’d planned.  As I drove I scanned the skies.  Although the skies were partly sunny on the high flat plains of eastern Montana I could see a thunderstorm off to the north, and two more in the southeastern distance.  So far it was dry but I wondered if I’d be driving into heavy weather.  As a guy who watches The Weather Channel and as a child lived in Kansas for a while, I know what tornado skies look like and the distant skies were angry.

As fate would have it, it wasn’t long before I drove right into a Major Storm.  I don’t know if the road took me to the storm or the storm came to the road but conditions got bad quickly.  The windshield wipers went from intermittent to full blast.  My speed dropped from 70mph to barely 30.  The rains came hard, then the hail.  With the hail I started to worry about the car and the windshield especially.  Luckily the hailstones were small and sporadic.  Mine was the only car on a long, lonely road in a storm and I really wanted to get out of that storm.  I can deal with heavy rain, but I’d prefer not to drive in a hailstorm.  I searched the horizon for a tree; someplace I could park and hide until the storm passed.  Yeah right; have you ever tried to find a tree on a prairie?  There aren’t any, there was nothing at all; just a vast plain that I assumed was still there, behind the rain and evermore darkening skies.

Somewhere near Poplar, or maybe it was Culbertson, I saw a tree on the side of the road.  It was a pathetic little tree, but it would do.  I headed for that tree and parked under it, across the highway from an abandoned building.  The hail had stopped and the rain had lightened, somewhat.  I scanned the fancy high-tech XM satellite radio for a weather report but the nearest station was in Minnesota.  No useful information.  If I just knew which way the storm was moving…

As I sat in the car wondering, should I stay or go, another car came driving up slowly from the east.  It was a cop car, or more specifically, a cop SUV, one of those tricked-out heavy-duty go-anywhere kind of rural cop vehicles.  I rolled down my window and flagged down the cop.  He stopped next to me in the middle of the highway ---there was nobody else around for miles.

“Hey,” I yelled to the cop over the booming thunder, “Do you have a weather-report on that cop-computer in your car?”

“Sure do” He answered.  “And there’s a super cell sitting right over this area!”

“Does it indicate wind direction?” I asked, “Which way is the storm moving?”

“East.” He answered.

“East!  Maybe I can get out from underneath it by out running it?”

“Good idea.”  Answered the cop as he pointed west, straight down the highway from where I’d just come.  “But first we’ve got to outrun that!”

I looked down the highway in the direction he was pointing and saw a funnel cloud forming.  “Holy shit!”

“Follow me,” Yelled the cop, “You’ve got a fast car, so keep up!”

With that, he whipped a u-turn, turned on his flashing red lights, and put the hammer down.  The next thing I know we’re hauling at 90-100mph, I’m on his bumper like a NASCAR driver and checking the rear view mirror for that tornado.

Four or five miles down the road the tornado had dissipated and the rains slacked.  The cop braked and motioned me to the side of the road.  We pulled off; I stopped next to the cop and rolled down my passenger window.

The cop leaned out his window and said, “Tornado fell apart and didn’t form, we’re clear.  If you continue east you’ll be in front of the storm.  If you can go southward, the weather’s even clearer.”

“Thanks so much!” I was truly grateful.  Just before I drove off the cop added one more thing:

“And no more speeding without an escort!”  He smiled.

“No problem.”  And I continued toward the state line.

By the time I got to Williston, North Dakota, it was mostly sunny.  Feeling optimistic after outrunning the tornado I ignored the cop’s advice and turned northward.  That turned out to be a Big Mistake but for a whole ‘nuther reason……