Whatever your opinion is about climate change, apparently this is what a modern late winter/early spring road trip looks like.
Ed and I set off on our drive trip back from Southern California to Chicago in mid-March. I always keep an eye on the weather forecast because we have several route options, and one day I hope the “northern” route though Colorado will be clear enough by that time or year.
No such luck. In fact the “southern” route wasn’t looking too good either. Happily, we delayed our departure, lured by an offer to stay another day in the sunshine by the pool at 50% off. Good thing too, because the day we would have been going through West Texas there was a dust storm, fire, and very bad truck accident along the interstate.
I was feeling pretty good about my planning, I have to admit. What followed, though, was four days of driving Apple Maps routes that were full of those red symbols – fire, wind, winter storm, hail, tornado. And that’s not counting the construction zones and phantom traffic jams for no reason at all.
Fortunately for us, we ran ahead of most of the drama – a windstorm across I-40 a couple of hours in our rear view, a tornado 45 minutes after we passed through.
So did that technology and all of the red exclamation points help us avoid the worst of it or just jangle the nervous system? I think our little household has agreed to disagree on that one.