Road Trip Pt. 04

In Nebraska, the clouds had looked light, fluffy, and nonthreatening, but the nearer I got to Salina, the clouds looked denser, heavier with moisture, darker, and more dangerous. The base of the cloud deck above me started to develop the dark puffy pattern I knew as mammato-cumulus clouds, a possible harbinger of hail, strong rain, lightning, and even tornadoes.

The more I persisted in my travels south; the lighter the traffic got, until I found myself almost the only vehicle on the road for long stretches. The lack of other cars or trucks on the road worried me; I wondered if they knew something I didn't. I stopped for gas, but no one there could add anything new to the weather forecast I already knew. They attributed the lack of traffic to it being a stormy Sunday. Leaving there, I noticed several riverbeds; most were dry, yet wide enough to carry a significant amount of water.

About four in the afternoon, to the west, I could see the start of a thunderstorm, the rain slanting to the ground beneath the dark cloud. Around me, virga seemed to fall from the overhead clouds – rain from the clouds that evaporated before reaching the ground. One thing I remembered from the meteorology course I received in my Special Ops training was that virga often seeded the storm cells around it, amplifying the cloud volume into huge cumulus monsters that held millions of cubic feet of supersaturated air and tons of water. The results could often be disastrous.

I accelerated along the highway, anxious to get to the motel before the heavy rain began.

I didn't make it.

About two miles north of Interstate 70 the first raindrops found me – large droplets of water hit the bike, my helmet facemask, and my leather jacket with large loud splats. Through my jeans, I could feel the sting as I ran into them at seventy-five miles per hour. There were few of them, but they were significant enough as I rode into them that I had to slow down.

I looked for cover, and saw an exit for a rural road – State Road 143. My highway went over the road on a couple of substantial bridges – one northbound and one southbound, so I figured I could hide beneath the highway under one of the bridges and stay dry until the storm passed. If worse came to worse, I could always just tough it out, ride the last seven miles to the motel, and get soaked.

I exited the highway, turned left at the bottom of the ramp, and had just gotten underneath the protection of the highway overpass when the gust front of the nearby thunderstorm rolled past. Strong winds sliced through the area, gusting to over fifty miles per hour – maybe even higher.

I parked my motorcycle on the shoulder of the macadam road under the bridge, and then realized that the wind gusts were significant enough that it might blow over despite its weight. I could see the bike wobbling on its stand. Anticipating that the bike might blow over, I positioned the bike beside a pylon for the bridge, untied my bedroll from the front of the bike, created a cushion on the ground, and carefully lowered the bike onto its side so nothing would scratch the beautiful paint job on the tank or the chrome accessories.

Under the bridge, there was a steep slope of paver bricks leading up to the underside of the highway I'd been on. The higher up the slope, the less likely it appeared that blowing rain would penetrate. I scampered about halfway up the slope, and sat, hoping the cell would pass quickly, and I could get underway again. To my left, I had a view to the west, and to my right, under the bridge for the northbound travel lane, a view to the east.

To the west, the sky darkened even further. Moreover, the color of sky turned 'strange' – somewhere between the brown of the soil in the area and dark green. The cloud bottoms looked odd, puffy, and mottled, almost like a snapshot of bubbling molten lava but upside down.

I saw the first funnel cloud only sixty seconds after I sat down. To the west, a couple of miles away, the dark clouds birthed a descending cloud tendril that obviously had rotational speed, enough so it spun for another minute before disappearing back into its mother cloud formation. No sooner had it disappeared than a larger one started to form and reach to the ground. The wind whipped wildly through the space under the bridge, creating eerie sounds. I watched as the base of the funnel touched down; an explosion of dirt and debris from the field it had struck swirled up into the rapidly swirling air mass.

Suddenly, from the east on the country road came a red pickup truck loaded with a half dozen bales of hay and some sacks of seeds. The truck screeched to a stop when it got under the bridge, sliding in near a bridge support opposite my motorcycle on the opposite shoulder of the road. The driver's door opened and a young woman wearing a western hat, boots, jeans, and a checkered shirt got out of the truck. Her hat immediately disappeared in the high wind: one second it was there, and the next it had vanished. Her long Auburn locks waved wildly in the wind. She turned to run to the same slope I sat on. She took one step, and a high-speed gust raked under the bridge and lifted her six or eight feet in the air before she rolled to the ground. In the same gust that toppled the girl, the truck door slammed shut with a loud pop. The rain blew almost horizontally under the bridge, and day had nearly turned into night.

The woman sat stunned where she'd fallen. She leaned into the wind almost at a forty-five-degree angle trying to stand before she fell to the ground again. The wind rolled her over a couple of times, moving her along the asphalt towards unprotected space between the two bridges.

I bolted down the embankment and with the wind at my back raced to her side, kneeling once I reached her. I yelled, "Are you all right? I saw you fall. I'm hiding from the storm up there." I gestured over my shoulder to the protected alcoves at the top of the embankments under the bridge. I offered my hands for support, and she latched on immediately. I got a brief smile.

"Just my pride's bruised," she said yelled over the din of the wind. I helped her up, and we held onto each other as we fought against the gusts to move back up to where I'd been when I first saw her. The wind speeds immediately under the over-passing road were less than at road level, but the rain still flew through the space horizontally.

As I started to settle in to watch the storm from our earlier perch halfway up the embankment, the pretty woman yelled, "No, we've got to get higher, as deep into one of those protected alcoves as we can get. This is a bad one – really bad; probably a four or five I think, and it's headed right for us." I recalled enough about the weather to know that a tornado rating of four or five made it a killer and destroyer, with winds as high as two or three hundred miles per hour.

We scrambled up the pavers as high as we could go as the fury and sound of the storm intensified. I yelled over the wind to her, "I'm Jim. I was on my way to Salina, but didn't make it. How long do these things last?" I assessed the young woman as we started to huddle away from the fury of the wind: mid thirties, hardy stock, pretty, and busty.

She yelled back over the din of the wind, "My name's Midge. The twister will pass us pretty soon. This one has a wide base – several hundred yards – maybe a half-mile; that's big – and very bad – very, very bad. They move about ten miles an hour out here, but they can stop in place or take crazy loops and can come back over the same area again. The rain might be around until after sundown; although with this weather front I'm not sure. The weather bureau said everything was moving fast, but issued the tornado warning until midnight."

The wind blew faster and faster, creating its own vortices as it swirled under the bridge. We'd had protection from the rain when we first took up our position, but now the wind eddies blew the rain everywhere, so we slowly were getting drenched even though we were high and supposedly protected. I had my leather jacket on, so didn't mind too much, but I watched as Midge's shirt slowly got wet and started to cling to her body. How could I think of sex at a time like this?

The wind speed past us kept rising gust by gust, as did the crescendos of noise from the approaching tornado. I had to look; I hitched myself to the edge of the niche between the steel beams where we'd hidden, holding with all my might onto the steel support spanning the road above for security. I peeked out into the maelstrom. I could see the bottom part of a huge dark funnel cloud that twisted and sped along the ground approaching us. The funnel was less than a half-mile away, and did have a wide base. Debris and dust flew out the side of the beast in all directions and from all heights. I stared in awe at this destructive powerhouse of nature.

I hustled back to where Midge sat; "We're going to take a direct hit. It's less than a half-mile away." We both tried to wedge ourselves more securely into our small but open alcove. I put Midge against the concrete abutment wall, and wedged myself against her. I wedged my legs into the opposite beam, and pushed my back against the other beam that made up the sides of our refuge. With winds this high, I started to seriously worry about the motorcycle.

Looking down at the roadway from inside our alcove, we both watched as the wind plucked first one and then another and another bale of hay from the bed of the pickup, tossing them to the east and out of sight at a high rate of speed. Soon, the entire bed of the pickup truck was empty, whereas it had been full of large bags of seed and hay only seconds earlier.

Some kind of wooden shed crashed into the outer beam of the bridge as though a giant hand had hurled the structure at the bridge right next to where we huddled; we both jumped. Midge yelled at me, "Protect your face; cover your face!" Midge crouched closer to me for her personal protection; I put an arm over her and tried to wrap my leather jacket around the two of us with our heads inside. Shards of wood and splinters flew everywhere for ten seconds after the shed exploded, and then the remains of the small building disappeared out the other side of the bridge at fantastic speed. I peeked down our slope. Debris flew by at over a hundred miles an hour. A heavy floor joist from the shed had slammed into the front window of Midge's pickup truck giving the truck a surreal look, as though it had a battering ram.

The noise got louder, increasingly sounding like a roaring freight train racing by right next to us at high speed. My ears ached from the sound and the air pressure. The bridge shook. The steel beams that weighed tons and tons shook at their roots right beside us. Dust and farm rubble continued past us; the eddies pelted us with detritus. At that point, I guessed the wind velocity under the bridge had passed well over a hundred-fifty miles an hour. I couldn't believe the speed would go much higher, but I was wrong.

As the wind speed increased, the din got louder and more debris smashed into the bridge, Midge's truck, and my motorcycle. The sky got even darker. I watched as the wind spun the Harley from where I'd carefully set it on its side, and slid the twelve hundred pound bike twenty or thirty feet until it came to rest wedged against the farthest bridge pylon at the base of the embankment. I hoped it wouldn't slide outside and be pulled up into the vortex. The bedroll disappeared instantly once the weight of the cycle had left it. My helmet that I'd snapped over the handle bars remained in place. Part of me entertained the idea of racing down the embankment to the bike and somehow securing it to the post, but I thought better of that suicidal idea.

Midge's truck wasn't so lucky; as the wind speed rose, the vehicle slowly started to skid backwards in jerks and starts; the brakes locked the wheels yet it slid anyway in the high wind. The red truck slewed slowly in the wind until it was nearly broadside to the road, and then it tumbled over. The whole truck just blew over ... and over ... and over. The truck picked up speed as it rolled out from under the protection of the far bridge throwing up handfuls of broken glass and plastic parts into the wind with each rotation. Midge peered over my arm as the vehicle disappeared. We were both shocked when the truck rose up in the air and disappeared from our view as though some invisible giant had suddenly plucked the red toy away from the ground. Midge grabbed my arm and hung on tight. My ears were popping wildly from second to second with the changing air pressure.

A huge tree branch flew by us, barely touching the ground. The conical top of a silo smashed into the side of the bridge, turning into unrecognizable twisted shards of aluminum as the mass hurled by us. The whole bridge shook so much I worried about its integrity as a hiding place. Seconds later, part of the roof of a house tumbled under the bridge, disintegrating into splinters as it rolled past in the high wind. On the surface of the roadway above, we could hear other large objects smashing into the ground, some significant enough to shake the bridge's foundation.

Midge and I started to hold our ears the noise became so loud; she buried her head under my leather jacket. Even in our shelter, we were both trying to protect our faces from flying debris. I had the feeling that debris was flying by only inches from my exposed backside. I'd left my helmet strapped to my bike; now I wished I'd brought it with me. When I took a quick look at the motorcycle, I noted that the tarps were long gone; along with a least one of the bags I'd tied on the bike with bungee cords. Oddly enough, I could still see my travel guitar tightly strapped to the sissy bar.

And suddenly, the wind speed started to drop precipitously and the noise abated slightly. The darkness lightened that had settled on us minutes before. Midge peeked out from under my jacket; she flashed me a worried look, gave a wan smile that signaled we might have lived through this, and then a look of great concern. We waited another minute and then cautiously came out of our safe place, moving down the embankment a few feet. The winds under the bridge had dropped to a stiff breeze. Rain came down in sheets, but more vertically than horizontally. Over the continuing noise of the receding tornado, I heard thunder.

The funnel cloud had passed over us and moved off to the east, aiming directly at several farms I had seen earlier. In the far distance, I could hear the wailing of sirens. I turned to Midge; she said flatly, "Tornado warning sirens. They trigger automatically, I think. They're located all over the county." Her voice had the shaky tinge of terror in it. I could tell Midge had been really scared; I guess I should have known better.

Then her tears came welling up from deep inside. The storm had terrified her right to her very core. At the bottom of the slope, she tried to stand next to me, but faltered and started to fall. I caught her. She looked at me and sobbed. I wrapped my arms around and just held her tight in a protective way. She shuddered from the fear she'd felt and for a full minute I felt her deep racking sobs with her face buried in my leather jacket. After a minute, I felt her spine stiffen; she brought her hands up to her face, and as she pulled away from me a little she wiped her face. She looked at me with gratitude for being there for her in that instant. No words were said, but I knew.

I went to the motorcycle, pulled the bike from where it had wedged against the bridge pylon, and with some difficulty hoisted it into its upright position. The left-hand side of the bike was badly scarred and scratched by the grit and stones it slid over. The chrome exhaust pipes and engine covers, roll bar, as well as the side of the gas tank had taken the brunt of the slide. One handle bar end showed damage as well. A directional light had broken off near the base of its mount, held on only by the internal wiring. If the bike hadn't caught on the abutment, no telling how bad the damage would have been. I fawned over the bike briefly, assessing the extent of the damage and the new paint job that would be required. Even the slightest damage to the bike bothered me at a deep level.

Amazingly, my helmet remained buckled to the handle bars where I'd snapped it as I dismounted, and the small travel guitar remained tied to the sissy bar with multiple bungee cords; both saddlebags and two of my strap-on travel bags were intact. I checked my laptop computer and discovered a crack across the face of the screen; the unit still seemed to work. The other helmet remained attached to the bike, although some piece of debris had scarred the visor.

Midge watched me assess the bike. As the rain slowed, we both ventured to the parallel bridge and then outside. The tornado had moved much further away now, but the train sound it made could still be heard. We looked for the red truck, but saw no sign of it. I scrambled up the embankment to the roadway above. I spotted a pile of red debris over a half-mile away. I signaled to Midge, and she came up and joined me as I pointed out the sight to her.

Midge stood for a moment, checked out what appeared to be the remains of her truck, and then watched the departing twister. I could see another tear form in the corner of her eye. She pointed to an area by the twister; "My farm is right over in that area, but we can't see it from here. I was headed there from Salina, but only had time to get off the highway and under the bridge before the twister hit."

Nearby, the battered remains of an industrial trailer lay in the middle of the highway. If there had been any cargo in it, the cargo was long gone. The metal beams that ran the length of the trailer were badly bent out of shape. There was no sign of the semi's tractor.

Heavy raindrops still pelted us periodically; a few would come down and then they'd stop. Once, a few hailstones the size of marbles forced us back under the bridge for a moment. When they ceased we went up to the overhead road again.

Midge and I both tried to use our cell phones, but we got 'No Service' messages on our screens. Even more disheartening, not a car or truck could be seen for miles on the long flat highway I'd been on before I sought shelter.

I asked Midge, "You're from around here, so where can we summon some help. The twister must have done some damage before it reached us, and it ran right over those farm buildings to the east." I pointed. Midge assured me that emergency equipment would appear shortly; that they're used to this type of thing.

We scampered back down the embankment to the motorcycle, and I fired up the engine. "Get on," I commanded to Midge. She hopped on, and we slowly threaded our way through the debris on the country road as we headed to the nearest farm about a half-mile away.

At the first farm, we found complete devastation. The house had been obliterated, and the barn had been blown over, apparently killing some livestock inside. Cars, trucks, and tractors were all damaged to some extent; one lay on its side.

An older man walked towards us as we came up the driveway. Midge yelled ahead, "Mr. Mullen, are you and your wife all right?" Mullen wore denim overalls and a tattered work shirt; he was in his fifties.

"Yes," he nodded as we stopped. "We made it to the storm cellar in time. This was the worst I've ever seen. I don't know what we'll do, rebuild I guess." He shook his head in sorrow.

Over his shoulder, a woman about the same age, waved at us. The gesture was perfunctory, and surely not one displaying joy.

Midge said, "All right, glad you're safe. We're going to check on Gus Riley down the road." She nudged me to turn around. We rode back down the driveway to the country road, and moved further from the bridge. We were constantly weaving around some piece of trash or part of a tree that had been left behind by the tornado. Off in the distance, we could now hear the wailing sounds of emergency vehicles coming north out of Salina.