TEXAS WEATHER

Last weekend when we went to visit my husband's mother, we drove in some horrible weather.  About 30 minutes after we left, it started raining.  Within an hour we were driving in some pretty hard rain.  It takes about 9 hours to drive to my mother-in-law's house, and we drove in rain all the way there.  Not just rain, hard rain. All. The. Way.  I have to be thankful, first that we had a big truck to drive in.  I would have hated to have driven that in a smaller car.  The other thing I was thankful for is that we never had to pull over because we couldn't see.  It did rain hard, really, really hard, but our wipers did well and we could see at least good enough to drive.  There were several times that we did slow down, and one time we were even in a long line of cars that were doing about 35 mph because the rain was so hard.  When we got to one of the bigger towns where we were going to eat lunch, the intersections were so flooded, the rain came up to our doors, and we have a big F150 Ford Crew Cab.  Once again, sure glad we were in that truck.  We did make it to my mother-in-law's ok without any incident, of which again I am thankful.

Coming home we didn't have any rain at all.  However, about 2 hours from home we ran into a hail storm!  I was driving and it was hailing so hard that I knew I had to pull over.  Think of the physics.  If you're driving 65-75 mph and the hail is the size of large marbles.... Another reason I knew I had to pull over is because all the truck drivers were pulling over.  And let me just tell you something right now - if the truck drivers pull over because of weather, you do the same.  They know what they're doing.  We sat there watching it hail and listening to the hail hit our brand new truck and we were just cringing, thinking of what it was doing to our truck.  We had several very large hailstones hit the top of the cab of the truck.  I told my husband to look out and see if he could see what size the large ones were.  They were golfball size.  Finally it stopped enough where we (and all the other cars pulled over) decided to start going again.  We had only gone about 1/2 a mile and we got into another (or maybe the same) hail storm!  This time it was hailing harder and the hailstones were literally covering the ground.  It looked like snow!  We had more golfball-size hailstones hit the top of the cab.  It was interesting that the bigger ones were only hitting the top of the cab and not the hood of the truck, but I was glad.  I figured if it left a dent, no one would really see it.  My husband was just freaking out!  I knew he was worrying about his truck.  Finally it let up a bit, but no one was moving.  I decided that since no one had parked in front of me (they were all behind me) that I would keep my flashers on and try driving on the shoulder.  I could see sunlight ahead and figured if I went another 1/2 mile or so I would drive out of it.  I think I only had to go about 1/4 mile and I finally got out of it so I could pull back onto the highway and speed back up.  I had to go slow at first, because the highway was literally covered with hailstones and you could tell it was slippery.  But after a couple minutes, we drove out of it.  When we got home, we checked the top of the cab.  My husband said he could see a very small dent in the top of the cab, but I was on the side he said it was on and I couldn't see it at all. Also no dents anywhere else on the truck. I told him that his "charmed life" was once again paying off. :0) (See "LIVING A CHARMED LIFE" - April 8th post.)