I'm Still Drying Out, Inky

I have to get this out of the way – please indulge me on this if you will.

In this story from today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, the paper states that the nor’easter (the weather front that came through this area on Sunday with a deluge of rain) was “not as bad as feared.”

Perhaps not in the immediate Philadelphia area, but New Jersey got socked, as noted in this excerpt…

New Jersey took a bigger hit.

Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey declared a state of emergency yesterday as flooding forced more than 1,400 residents from their homes. A man died, trapped by floodwaters in his car in Woodbridge, and a 79-year-old man died in Belleville, apparently from drowning.

In Cumberland County, about 30 families were evacuated from the Cedar Crest mobile home park in Vineland to escape the surging Blackwater Branch Creek and given shelter in an elementary school, said Anthony Gioielli, county public safety director. No injuries were reported.

But South Jersey was "not as severely impacted" as other parts, Codey said. It "will dry out before the rest of the state."

Given this account, let me tell you a bit about my day yesterday.

I drove north on I-95 into New Jersey and traffic slowly started to crawl as I approached Route 1 (and by the time I’d heard a state trooper on the radio say “If you don’t have to travel to Trenton today, don’t,” it was too late). I was unable to exit and Route 1 and head north, so I continued on 95 as it turned into 295 south (and don’t ask how a road that’s labeled north can change to south unless you know something about this area – it is kind of weird, I’ll admit), with a top speed of about 5 mph until I exited as Sloane Avenue and tried to head north from that direction. When I saw that I could not do that because traffic was so hopelessly snarled due to flooding detours, I picked up 295 south again, took a break on the way, and then picked up 73 North towards the Tacony-Palmyra bridge, having given up any hope of getting to work yesterday; at this point, I was merely trying to get out of New Jersey. But 73 was a parking lot also due to flooding, so I exited to 38 East (?) back towards 295, picked that up, then exited at 541 toward the New Jersey Turnpike, drove that route to the PA connector bridge, and finally got out of New Jersey that way before arriving home about a half hour later.

I was on the road for over four hours yesterday. It was the worst driving experience I’d encountered in 13 years, matched only by the time I was stuck on Route 202 in the western suburbs during an ice storm, at which point I was very nearly forced to evacuate my car altogether.

I also heard on the New Jersey traffic yesterday that 50 major highways in that state were impacted to one degree or another by the flooding, so my guess is that there were hundreds of other motorists in the same situation I was.

“Not as bad as feared”? Perhaps. But it was still pretty damn bad anyway.