Monday, November 28, 2005

I heard a couple of working stills during the night, but in both instances the cancelled the Squad and Communications van. I awoke a couple of times during the night to loud thunder from a storm that came through. I left the Van Vorst home shortly before 6AM. I thanked Paige and Donna for the dinner, the enjoyable evening with their family and for the good nights stay. Things worked out great. It was just raining lightly as I made my way down the Kennedy Expressway into downtown in about 15 minutes. It took me the same time to get out the Dan Ryan and onto the Skyway Toll Road. It started to pour just after I got on the Skyway.

I made it to southbound I-65 (near Gary, Indiana) by around 7AM- a journey of about 50 miles. Then it really started to pour cats and dogs. I thought I might have to pull off the freeway and wait it out, but the rain let up enough that there was good visibility of the cars ahead. It rained off an on all the way to Indianapolis, where it stopped briefly.

It started raining again just south of Indianapolis and got really windy as I approached Louisville. The rain got pretty heavy at times, but visibility was good. When I neared Louisville, the sky to the west turned an eerie shade of purple. Then the tones on the fire radio were set off to warn a number of departments of the coming severe weather and Tornado Watch until 1900 hours. I made a quick stop to get gas ($1.91) and was soon back on I-65 southbound, trying to outrace the bad weather.

I was traveling right near the edge of the storm. It rained off and on south of Louisville. I came across a bad accident in the northbound lanes about 20 miles north of Bowling Green, KY. It looked like three or four cars had been involved. One van was burned to a shell. Fire, police and medic units were on the scene. Northbound traffic was backed up for miles.

Just outside Bowling Green my luck ran out. It rained so hard that traffic almost stopped on the freeway. A few cars turned on their four-way flashers for better visibility and we all slowed down to about 20 miles an hour. Then we came across a car totally turned around and against the divider in the northbound lane. Luckily there was a high divider between the north and southbound lanes at this point. We must have had a couple inches of rain in a half hour. Many cars pulled over or turned off the freeway. Our little group with four-way flashers blinking just kept creeping along.

Eventually, the rain let up enough that we could get our speeds up to about 60 for the remaining drive into Nashville. Luckily, the rain let up while driving through Nashville. Once I got on I-24 the clouds let loose again and it poured all the way to Murfreesboro (about 35 miles SE of Nashville). I decided to stay the night in Murfreesboro as there are plenty of motels to choose from, and I can still hear the Nashville FD trunked radio. I wasn’t about to press my luck trying to get all the way into Chattanooga (through the mountains) in that storm.

I checked into a motel around 3PM, about two blocks off the freeway. There are all kinds of restaurants less than a block from the motel (so you know I won’t starve). Around 4PM the rain finally let up here. It had cooled down from 70 degrees to 51 degrees in a couple hours. I thought I’d be picking up the Murfreesboro FD radio signals, but no luck so far. They may have changed frequencies. They Murfreesboro FD has 10 or 11 stations.

I think I’m clear now of all those nasty storms moving across the central states. Hopefully it will be nice enough so I can visit some stations in the Atlanta area tomorrow. I’m only about 210 miles outside the Atlanta area. If the weather is OK in the Atlanta area, I may stay there for two nights.

That’s all for now. Your wet and weary Roving Reporter

There are NO photos for day 2