What’s your worst weather travel story?

My mom and I were flying from Cincinnati to Mobile, Alabama to visit my grandma in the Florida Panhandle, and the only restroom on the plane was out of order. We got stuck in a holding pattern because of a storm over Mobile. We kept circling and circling, and no one could use the restroom while we waited! I was sure I would burst before we made it to the ground.

Was on a solo bike ride from Georgia to Upstate New York in 1987. About 5 days into the trip, I reached a section of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. What I didn't know at the time was there wasn't much on that road except for scenery. I was stuck riding in a cold rain all day with nothing to eat except what I had for breakfast that morning and no where to stop to get food or drink. When I finally reached a hotel, it was dark and I was probably borderline hypothermic. I went to the desk and asked for a room, but the guy behind the counter said they were all booked up. I didn't know what to do. Then a voice came from out of nowhere and said "Oh, he's on a bike, give him a room." And suddenly a room was available. It was the most expensive room of the whole trip, but at that point I didn't care. My glasses were all wet and fogged up so I never even got to see the face behind the voice that got me that room. I probably spent about an hour in a hot shower to warm up. The next day was warm and sunny and I continued on with my trip and arrived home about a week later.

We were driving from Idaho down to Colorado, and somewhere in the middle of Wyoming we got stopped in a blizzard. It was so bad that we couldn't see three feet in front of us, but there was no where to stop and it was getting pretty late, and we had a newborn in the car with us. We had been following pretty close behind a truck mostly just so we could follow it's tail lights because we couldn't see the road, but then it turned off the road, and suddenly the snow cleared up, so my husband who was driving at the time sped up a bit. Right as he sped up a cop saw us and gave us a speeding ticket. We were going well under the speed limit, but the cop said we were going too fast due to weather conditions. That was a nightmare of a trip.

Or there was that time when I was a kid that we went to go see niagra falls and it just happened to be so foggy that day, that we couldn't even see the falls at all. We had driven all the way up there from southern California... what a waste.

I thought I was going to be wise, and beat an incoming front. My mode of transportation at the time was a 12-year-old Suzuki 700 Intruder, and my plan was to ride from El Campo to Houston, close to 80 miles, and make it before the front hit. I got as far as the Hungerford exit. Pulling under an overpass to ascertain my chances of success, I decided I'd better head back. Droplets were already falling before I stopped, so southbound I went. I got as far as Pierce when it hit. First, the temperature dropped about 15 degrees. I had my leather jacket on, so it wasn't too bad. But then, the rain started, and it wasn't long before I was soaked. Finally, the wind picked up...and up...and up some more. It blew me from the right-hand lane, into the left, and then off onto the shoulder. "Jesus, take the bars!" I squealed, fighting to keep it on the asphalt. As soon as I made it back into town, I pulled over and parked under the awning of a local business to burn one.

I also rode a GSF-600S through Tropical Storm Frances, in a 44mph crosswind, at night, on a two-lane Texas blacktop, but that's another story.

My sis and I were scheduled to fly to Tulsa from Denver for Christmas with our mom. It started snowing when we got to the airport. We got bored and decided to go to a movie, since our flight wasn't scheduled to leave for several hours. We took a bus to a movie house several miles away, but never reached it. The snow got heavier and the bus could hardly get through the street. It finally stalled out and we all had to walk. My sis and I started walking back to the airport in foot-high snow. We made it to a motel near the airport by the time the snow hit 2 feet, and had to stay in the motel overnight. We had coffee and crackers for supper -- that's all they had at the motel. Even the tavern next door didn't have any food. The snow was hip high when we waded over there to check. The next morning there was 2 to 3 feet of snow on the roadway. We walked to the airport, and had to hang around all day while they plowed the runway. We finally got out, and to Tulsa, where there was no snow at all. When we flew back to Denver a week later, the snow was piled so high that the street signs were at ankle level. It was weird stepping off the snow bank onto the top step of the bus.

In 1975, I was attending college 200 miles from home. A friend who lived nearby and I decided to go home for the Easter weekend. We left about 1:00 Thursday afternoon. It had already started to snow, but by the time we got 80 miles it was really storming. We stopped and stayed with his grandparents overnight, taking off again Friday morning. The storm had gotten worse, and after we got another 40 miles, they closed the interstate, pulling traffic off into a small town where they set up cots in the school gym. Finally we were able to get out of town on Saturday morning arriving at my parents place about 11:00 AM. Then we needed to get back in the car about 1:00 PM Sunday to return to school. So my long Easter weekend with my family ended up being barely over 24 hours.

Hmm...

It's probably the time I went to Mont Tremblant in Quebec. Just the day before, there was a snowstorm that brought down about 30+ cm of snow. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the snowstorm lasted almost a week =-= So we were travelling for about 8 hours in whiteout conditions and REALLY snowy highways. But we had fun skiing, so I guess it was somewhat worth it.

AND...

There was another time when me and my family DROVE to NYC. Btw, we're from Ontario. So basically, it was ten hours+ border customs. Basically, for the whole day, there were non stop thunderstorms and hailstorms. So we had to go through tiny mountain roads and long stretches of valleys to reach NYC, and strangely enough, when we arrived in New York, all the bad weather stopped.

Mother Nature must really hate me.

Back in the 1980's I was in Omaha Nebraska during the winter and was going out to dinner in the Old market. I took a Happy Cab which were these wonderful old bulky cars from the 1950's that were so solid, they were great and are no longer around from what i understand. In the middle of a blizzard I was headed downtown and slid in ice through an intersection, hit 4 more cars and was pinned in the cab for almost an hour. (Not hurt at all, just pinned)

Went back to the house I was staying in and all the pipes in the basement had froze and broke and water was flooding the basement. Couldn't get a plumber at that hour, so the neighbors helped us turn off the water main for the night. Called a Happy Cab again to head to a friends for the night since the basement was flooded and slid through another intersection hitting another car. (Again, not hurt) Needless to say, my Happy Cab experience that night wasn't so Happy :) LOL

It was a dark and stormy night... Well ok it wasn't yet.

I left England at a blazing beautiful sunny day. To transfer in Philadelphia for the flight home. My wife was scheduled to pick me up at the airport. All was going smoothly. I arrived checked my gate things looked well, except a tad rainy. I then get a call on my cell phone telling me my flight had been canceled. My wife new on the web before the airport did! I am like no I just checked the gate.

Talked to my co-workers we went over to the gate they confirmed weather delays and the flight was canceled, but there is another one! I was re-scheduled my co-workers got put on stand-by since the plane was now full.

We board and I get told of all things we are #42 if take off pattern. Im like yeah right and goto sleep. I am woken up as we hit the gate. Flight canceled the crew had too many hours waiting on tarmac. No more flights. I get to stand in a line with hundreds of other people to be told we will be sent by BUS to our next airport. Yah. SO I get on the bus and ride... I got to my destination Airport at 3:30 am decided not to call the wife. Took a cab home.

So that's how a 9.5 hour trip takes just over 24 hours due to weather.

My wife did not blame me for waiting at the airport for 2 hours because the airline never admitted it was never going to make it.

Driving back from Martha's Vineyard several years ago, a deluge came upon us, a nor'easter, whatever... but we were on southbound I 95, and whoosh, I couldn't see past the car's hood! The wipes on high were useless. I feared rear ending a car, but also feared being rear ended. There was no way I could see where to pull over, and again, the fear that I would hit another car, go off into a ditch, or be hit by another vehicle pulling over was part of the dilemma. All I could do was continue ahead, maintaining about 45 mph, to try to get past the worst part of it, but it continued to come down across our windshield as though someone was on the pouring buckets of water down from the roof!

It was very disorienting, but I was able to stay in my lane by looking to the left, over the edge of the car's hood, where I could see the lane striping marks go by as they passed the headlights. I guess the left front corner of the car was acting as buffer, clearing enough of the onslaught away by the speed to get a glance at the lane markings. I had my hazard lights flashing, and kept an eye on my rear view, in case I could see a glow of increasing light that would mean a vehicle, maybe even an 18 wheeler was about to crush us! Of course I also had to peer forward to see if there would be the back end of a vehicle rushing back toward us! Every time we realized we were going under an underpass it was too late to stop, the relief was less than a quarter second and we could see a number of vehicles already stopped on the shoulder. My wife remembers seeing an exit sign for CosCob only as it was passing her side window. It had to be a solid 30 minutes of that before the rainfall thinned out enough to see beyond the front end of the car.

One was when I was visiting a friend and we were driving up from Corvallis Oregon to Seattle WA for a convention. We got hit by a thunderstorm with horrible hail. It was so bad we literally couldn't see but luckily were able to pull off the road to a gas station where we waited out the worst of it. It was the heaviest hail I had ever seen; not large hail stones but a downpour of hail!

The second was on my (so far) only trip to Japan, back in September 2008. We arrived during the last part of a typhoon that was brushing by the islands. The second day we were in Kyoto, we were supposed to go out and do some things, but the rain got so bad we finally grabbed a couple of cabs and headed back to our hotel. All the time we were heading back I kept thinking that I was so glad I wasn't doing the driving! The rain was blinding!