White Out!!

Yesterday I went to Ogden—we had a conference we had to participant in. Nothing special , the usual sitting at a table, smiling, answering questions and wishing I was any where but there and specially back in the office. Actually the duty itself was not bad duty the problem was the duty was 50 or 60 miles from home on a day forecast to bring snow.

I left the house about 6:20 am thinking I had more then enough time to drive distance from my homer to Ogden. I was pleased thinking I was making good time I headed North from Salt lake county and I was relying on written directions which came with E-mail about the conference. And of course the ‘turn-off” which was supposed to be the “turn-off” was closed and so I took the very next turn off and realized I was on the entire other side of the city. I had to back track all over the city and I was actually late by the time I got to the conference center. The day was beautiful though, I had sun shine and it was pretty warm and I was beginning to think, to hope that the weather guy was just making things when the front moved into Ogden about 2:00 pm.

The skies just wept at first but soon the temperature dropped and the snow began falling, rather should I say blowing. I had hoped the storm would conform to th weather forecast and rush through in two hour but no way.

By 3:30pm winds were gusting torrents of white, powdery snow—producing “white-outs” and I began to get nervous as I contemplated my ride home.

By 4:00 pm I knew the snow would not relent and if I was going to have a ghost of getting home before dark. The last break had finished and no one else was going to come by so I packed my stuff and headed South. The snow was blowing so hard I was experiencing white outs o the point I ACTUALLY GOT LOST TRYING TO GET OUT OF Ogden Utah!!!

4:30 pm I had found the interstate was heading home. It was snowing badly, but I was cruising at 45 mph and I was beginning to think I might make it home by 5:30 pm but just as I was passing the Air Force museum I was hit by a wall of red lights, break lights and I was crawling. Snow was falling and being driven by the wind and all I could do was get comfortable listen to the radio and drive.

By 6:00 pm I was almost home, in fact I was directly my house on the interstate. I had two turn offs to go and I would be home but we were still crawling. I had worked myself all the way over to the far right lane and I ended up taking the off ramp on what I thought was the off ramp for my home and I was one ramp off. So I ended up driving the rest of the way home on back streets to my house. I made it home by 6:40Pm What a stressful long day!.