Last Friday I on my way home from San Diego I could see huge cumulus clouds building up in the East but one thing I have learned from flying, it is impossible to know how far away they are – could have been over home, or all the way to AZ or CO.
Got down to the Valley floor and there was a wall of grey 10 miles ahead. A huge storm cloud tilted in the sky, the left hand side tipping all the way to the desert floor. To the right, a veil of darkness. Hmm.. this was going to be interesting.
Inside the cloud it started to hail, giant balls of hail banging on the glass. The wind was fierce and visibility went down to maybe 20 feet. A lot of people had pulled off onto the hard shoulder but the storm wasn’t moving and I figured I could be stick there for ages. So I kept going, but at 20 mph or so, watching the white line real close. Yeah, I had the camera for a while but soon realised I was in enough danger as it was, no need for more.
Finally got outside the storm but it looked filthy in the sky in all directions,. A few miles later, a large brown curtain masked the road ahead. No rain this time but the storm winds had whipped up tons of sand and dirt and for a few seconds it was almost total brown-out. Scary stuff.
I was glad to get home and, I thought, get to enjoy experiencing the storm from under our patio roof (I have an extreme weather fetish) but the storm stayed to the west and the north of us. Naturally, I had washed the car on Sunday and now on Friday it was all dirty again.
It was also the first time for me to try out my new Anywhere Travel Companion, an aviation and street GPS unit. Maybe more on the latter in a future post.
