Tam Update

(Updated, 1400)
(Updated, 1810)
(Updated, 1945)

Herself set out for K-town noonish; I left on an extended shopping expedition right before.
[If city streets are like this, how bad is the freeway? --Bad, very bad.]
I was at my last stop, ready to check out, when my phone rang. Tam had just slalomed the BMW rollerskate through a 12-car pile-up, riding the antilock brakes in near-blizzard conditions and come to a stop unscathed.

...Unscathed and next to a Honda leaking gasoline, which is where her first call ended.

I made a few calls of my own and learned the highway had been shut down, due to the white-out Tam described when she called back: "Visibility got worse and worse; suddenly, there was a guy standing in the road waving his arms, and shapes beyond," which turned out to be 5 or 6 cars accordioned into one another on each side of the road and off into the ditches.

She's fine now; the State Police showed up and worked quick triage, sending her (sport-o-car and all) to a truck stop a couple miles down the road. She was going to take awhile to investigate road conditions and catch her breath before deciding her next move. (On the telephone, Tam-seriously-rattled sounds just like Tam-as-usual but even the steel-nerved have to slow back down).

It's been white-out and sunshine alternating at Roseholme. Makes me glad I picked up hot chocolate mix, eggs and bacon.Update (1): She gathered her intel and her coolth, set out down the road again...and traffic ground to a standstill ten miles on. As of about 2:00 p.m., Our Miss Tam is stranded in a pack of 16-wheelers and hasn't quite got 35 miles away in two hours. It's IFR.

In theory, if she keeps going South, things have got to improve; in practice, that's tricky to do if nobody else on the freeway is minded to travel.

Update (2): About ten after 6, she's in Lexington, Kentucky. There's snow on the ground and on the streets; there is no salt or sand on the streets and it is rush hour. It was a very short call.

Near white-out conditions from Columbus, Indiana to a few miles North of the Ohio River had traffic c-r-a-w-l-i-n-g. Doesn't sound like it's much faster in Lexingtion. I take back what I said about conditions getting better as she gets further South. What sort of weather-witchery have they been up to in Dixie? Global what-ening?

Update (3): 7:30 p.m. finds our young heroine stymied by black ice -- and even more so by the way people drive on it -- some 200 miles outside her destination. She's found a motel. Sounds like a darned good idea to me.