Welp, yesterday was an ‘experience’ I don’t care to repeat…
Got up early to catch and earlier flight home from SMF, only to have one pilot turn up sick. Back on my original flight to DEN. Got there, looked at the weather and went and bought a big bottle of water. There was a SOLID front scheduled to hit DFW about the time I arrived!
Sure enough, a half hour out of DEN on what was supposedly a 1+20 flight to DFW, we started hitting turbulence. And couldn’t get out of it!
And then the fun started! A reroute NORTH, not south around the southern edge of the storm front. We ended up north of Ft. Smith, then routed down about to Alexandria, LA, then in the back way to DFW, all in what ‘I’ would call moderate turbulence. I could tell we were changing altitudes every 10-15 minutes, but we never got any smooth air. The flight attendants spent over an hour in their seats, and our 1+20 flight turned into 2+30 when we finally landed an hour late (and sketchy on gas).
But I did have a first on that flight! The first time EVER my bag was the first one up the conveyor belt!!! Grabbed the bag and ran to the car (many thanks to JimJim for coming to get me). We had just gotten on 820 heading out when the RAIN hit, closely followed by wind gusts I’m guessing were upward of 60mph, that were moving my SUV from one lane to the other. And we had to dodge at least one of the big road signs that been blown into the roadway! Folks were hiding under overpasses, or in some cases just stopped in the lanes (IDJITS).
It took right at an hour to get to Rhome, normally a half hour drive at speed, but we were doing 25 to 30mph and there were times we might have been able to see 100 yards…maybe… And more people stopped in odd places. Pretty much everybody was running their hazard warnings, and skating around due to the amount of water on the road.
A little over 2 hours later, I was finally home! And as soon as I finished this post, I crashed…
So don’t expect any replies early this morning. And a last update on PP, she is doing better, had her second PT and they ‘exercised’ the joint and nothing came apart! Great news, even if she was hurting afterward.
And some people were asking about the amount of snow up in Lake County… From a commercial photog who got a drone up!
6 inches of snow lakeside, 12 inches up where we were, and 18-19 inches on tops of the hills!
