Caught in a blizzard

Last week Jen and the kids had quite the adventure. At about 3PM last Wednesday they were headed to basketball practice, and a massive storm blew in. At 3:15 I got a call from Jen and she said that she could not see past the end of her car -- all cars are the road had simply stopped. The storm was supposed to pass quickly, but ended up stalling right at the Point of the Mountain (which is where Jen was). Jen then noticed that she was not on the road at all. In the "white out" conditions, she followed a car that crossed oncoming traffic and they were now all in a field on the wrong side of the road. The Highway Patrol shut the road down and they had to simply wait the storm out.

I was able to get within a mile of Jen at about 6PM, but cars were littered all over the road and I saw at least a dozen accidents. There was no way to get to her -- the road conditions were awful and the wind was just howling. At 10PM a tow truck tried to get Jen back on the road but ended up getting stuck himself. So now Jen, Nathan, Anna and Jacob were stuck in the cab with a tow truck driver. At 11PM a "search and rescue" team arrived and took the fam to a nearby church that they converted to a shelter. I arrived at the church at 11:30 and we spent the night there.

All told, over 100 cars were stranded on the road and were towed out the next day. A school bus was also stuck with over 50 kids on it, and one elementary school kept kids at their school overnight instead of risking the bus trip. Several long-time Utahans commented it was the worst storm they've ever seen. When we arrived back at our home the next morning we had a 5 foot snow drift blocking our house. I eventually hiked through it and brought snowshoes back for the rest of the family and they hiked in.

So....quite the adventure. The kids thought it was exciting for the most part, and Jen was as tough as always (she just make the kids catch up on a week of reading while waiting in the car). Still, I'm pretty sure our next car will have four wheel drive.