Fear of Overpass
2005/06/15
Driving to Houston yesterday, I was still sixty miles out from the city, when I first saw it. Is that lightning I saw out of the corner of my eye or just the strobe lights on that antenna tower? The sky is awfully dark over there and, well, it's evening and hot and humid, just the perfect growth medium for a summer thunderstorm. There it is again, that time definitely lightning.
A few more miles and I can make out a distinct thunderstorm on the left, to the north. I start seeing distinct lightning in the distance east of Brenham, near Chappell Hill. We really get into it at the aptly named Prairie View, by Waller, where the hill country of Austin melts into the coastal plain, flat as a pool table from here to the Gulf of Mexico.
Suddenly this is seriously dangerous looking lightning. There are strikes every two seconds on the average, only a mile or less to the north. Huge, thick, repeated strokes, too, not just singles. I lower the window a little to listen to the thunder so I can judge the distance. Very low sky, dark puffy clouds. I can still see sunlight through the thin spots, though. It's after eight o'clock now, but it's daylight time and almost the solstice, so the sunset is very late. Above the cloud layer, the sky should still be bright.
I outrun the storm going seventy, until it starts to rain then down to 55-60, still a lot faster than it is. I get to see it from back to front, coming up behind it and then ending up ahead of it. I call my brother from Kickapoo Road, no kidding, warning him that he is going to get the snot beat out of him in about ten minutes. He says the storm is already visible and coming his way. Should I be on that cell phone in this storm? Nah, no problem, the phone isn't the problem. The problem is the car that is the highest spot on the landscape, the lightning rod, especially when going over one of those humps in the road.
On this road, an overpass is probably forty feet above the surroundings, which makes it the highest point in this terrain, except for the rare spot where there happens to be a very large tree or a light pole nearby. And the roof of the car driving on the overpass is just a couple feet higher, all the better target. Lightning is striking right there only a few hundred yards away, flash flash! Geez, do I want to drive over that overpass in front of me that makes me taller than the trees and the utility poles in this area? Crack crack! Feels much better down here looking up at that exposed hump. At least at sixty I'll be on top of it exposed at risk for only a couple seconds.
I never do see lightning strike the roadway, nor me, obviously. Once I get off the highway into the safety of the underpasses, the puddles are deep. I can't tell how deep, so I carefully watch the car in front of me, follow his track if he doesn't get stuck.
Down toward Houston I notice that all the lights on the service road blink red. And most of the neighborhoods are dark. This area must have lost power at least for a short time. Something killed the control systems for the traffic lights and they've all gone into their safe mode, which is stop signs for everyone. The next day the report on CNN says that 100,000 people lost power from Houston to the Louisiana border in a massive outage caused by the storms that evening. I'm not surprised.
