My wife & I went to Tampa on Wednesday for the SEC Basketball Championship. After Auburn went down on Friday in their first game against Texas A&M we decided to leave the next day. So we headed back to Auburn, AL early Saturday leaving at 7 a.m. and looking at a 7 hour drive. We had had some bad weather on Wednesday near the state line of Georgia & Florida with hard rain & winds. Yesterday about 20 miles South of Ocala we ran into some of the hardest rain we had ever driven through. I told my wife once we got through it that I’d have to put it in the top ten hardest rains we had been in. About 15 miles further north traffic came to a stop - an absolute stop. My apple map showed a 1 hour 45 minute delay and there was no where to get off. It took us 2 hours to go 5.3 miles to the first Ocala exit - mile marker 350.
I was saying that it was some stupid people driving too fast or truckers doing things they shouldn’t have been doing. What in the world took so damn long. Well, we got to Exit 350 and my wife said there was styrofoam all over the place on the right looking like snow. Then immediately on the other side of the interstate we saw trees down and roofs on hotels damaged. Curtains were blowing out of hotel windows where the windows were broken out. Then we saw 2 tractor trailers turned over and down an embankment. Of all things a tornado had crossed I-75 right at the exit and bunches of police, fire trucks, and emergency vehicles were all over the place. So no speeding or bad drivers. Just a tornado hitting right there.
Lots of people including us were lucky not to be there when it hit.
I was saying that it was some stupid people driving too fast or truckers doing things they shouldn’t have been doing. What in the world took so damn long. Well, we got to Exit 350 and my wife said there was styrofoam all over the place on the right looking like snow. Then immediately on the other side of the interstate we saw trees down and roofs on hotels damaged. Curtains were blowing out of hotel windows where the windows were broken out. Then we saw 2 tractor trailers turned over and down an embankment. Of all things a tornado had crossed I-75 right at the exit and bunches of police, fire trucks, and emergency vehicles were all over the place. So no speeding or bad drivers. Just a tornado hitting right there.
Lots of people including us were lucky not to be there when it hit.
