Christmas Trip to Amarillo

For those of you that are keeping up with the Blog I will update you on our trip to Amarillo for Christmas with the family.

We left the morning of Dec. 24 at 7:00 am and it is about a 5 1/2 hr trip. We knew there had been some snow in Amarillo and that it was moving towards Dallas; but we never guessed what we were in for. Snow in our part of the country is - here comes the beautiful flakes - watch them hit the ground - now they melt.

A little over an hour into the trip at Bowie, TX, which is about 45 mi south of Wichita Falls, the steady rain quickly turned into snow flakes. In less than 5 miles the trees were white. The next 5 miles saw the ground turn to white. Then we had to be a little careful with our driving as snow was just starting to accumulate on the road.

We then saw our first car in the ditch. And another and another and then one upside down! We were still 30 mi from Wichita Falls and the snow was really coming down and it was really starting to accumulate. By the time we reached the Love's gas station just before getting into Wichita Falls we were really ready to take a break and I thought the way things were going it might be smart to top off the fuel tank. By now we had seen well over twenty cars in the ditch.

We made our brief stop, topped the tank, worked on the freezing windows & windshield wipers. I guessed there was 4 to 5 inches on the ground. As we started going through Wichita Falls, on their new overhead freeway system 4 lanes wide on each side, we couldn't believe the number of cars and big rigs having trouble. First we saw two 18 wheelers on the other side jack-knifed into eachother with wreckers trying to pull them apart and the traffic backed up behind them. Just then two cars spun out about 50 yds in front of us. They touched slightly and one hit the outside wall. We got around them and the snow was getting very deep on the road. Small cars were beginning to have trouble as they were now dragging in the snow. We were fortunate to be in the F-150 and have the clearance needed to get over the snow and ruts.

As we left the town we thought good riddens to W.F. and their traffic, now we can get out on the open road and be safer. Wrong. Immediately the visibility became horrible as the wind was now blowing 50 mph and nothing to block it. More cars in the ditch. It is about 40 miles to Vernon and so we thought if we make Vernon it would get better.

Between the visibility going down to complete white-out conditions and the amount of snow on the road we were going 13 mph. Sometimes up as high as 18 and sometimes as slow as 8. More cars and more cars in the ditch on both sides of the road. Some in the last few minutes and some an hour or so ago. Oh, and we hadn't seen a snow plow yet - but then they really don't have snow plows in Wichita Falls, Texas. We were still about 30 mi from Vernon and we were now about 5 hrs into the trip and Vernon is supposed to be half way.

We were beginning to loose count of the cars in the ditch, they were not so important any more as we were struggling just to see and keep going, but we know it was over 40. As Lori drove I would roll the window down about every 10 min and stick my arm and head out the mindow and work on the windshield wipers - this was becoming a big problem and they were really icing up. Now we were 6 hr into the trip and still about 20 mi from Vernon. That's right 10 mi in one hour. No where to go - going back didn't look like any better proposition than going forward and we were in the middle of nowhere.

Another 10 mi in an hour and now we were 10 mi from Vernon. We finally had to pull over - we could absolutely see nothing from the blowing snow and our windshield was icing up too much. We struggled to find a county road so we could get over just enough so we wouldn't get hit - maybe 10 ft off the road. We had to be careful too that we wouldn't get stuck. We sat 45 min, finally thought we could see 50 ft instead of 10 ft, and got the courage to start out again. Now we could go 20 mph! More cars and big rigs in the ditch as we came up to Vernon. Over 50 cars now in the ditch and many big rigs, several of them jack-knifed. From Vernon to Memphis, TX it steadily got better but still more cars in the ditch and more and more big rigs jack-knifed.

Whew - we were finally out of the snow, Lori was on edge, we were all tense, and the girls were half frozen from me opening the window so many times to clean the wipers.

The trip took over 10 hrs. We found out latter that they had over 16 inches of snow with 50 mph wind and virtually no snow plows. We also found out they had closed the road from Wichita Falls to Vernon shortly after we went through and it was closed for over 24 hrs.
Wow, What a trip! Merry Christmas indeed!