Traffic Post Tornado (Post #344) 5/27/2013

Traffic. I drive through Moore and South Oklahoma City on my way to my job at the capitol every day. My hours allow me to miss most of the traditional 0800 and 1700 traffic pile ups. When bad weather hits, all bets are off.

The recent tornado in Moore has cut the city virtually in half. The flash flooding the day the tornado hit was amazing. This picture is me fording Sunnylane at I-40. I had a bow-wake up to the license plate on the Honda Civic. It made me really wish I was in my Range Rover.

The major North-South corridors were all littered with debris and destruction and as you can imagine gawkers. The looky-lookers cause traffic to crawl through the affected areas. The day the tornado hit both southbound highways were closed. The major feeder streets from the airport on the west side of OKC to Sooner road were also closed.

The day of the tornado I drove out of the city and down a road in far east Norman. Anderson road was not affected by the recent tornadoes. I sailed down it.

I tried to use Sooner Road the day after the tornado. It moved well both in the morning and evening. So Wednesday I attempted to use it again to get home. Bad idea.

This is a shot of the traffic. South bound was backed from SE 134th street up past SE 74th street. 5 miles of the traffic you see above. The geniuses cleaning up the debris decided it was a good idea to park their dump trucks ON SOONER ROAD. This caused everyone to merge to one lane right where the tornado went across Sooner Road. Ridiculous.

I still don’t understand why the traffic was backed up on the northbound lanes. My normally 30 minute 20.9 mile commute was a 1.5 hour ordeal. The traffic was like that again on Thursday. I thankfully took the Anderson Road alternative.

In a week or so the traffic will move through these areas like it should. I remember it was like this back in 1999 when the May 3rd tornado tore through this same area. I remember sitting on I-35 while people gawked at the destruction. I looked out the side window and laying on the side of the road was the right half of a deer. Yeah.

Next week I am staying in Norman and attending the Six Sigma Training Institute at the University of Oklahoma. This means I won’t have to commute to OKC. Hopefully traffic will be back to normal the week after.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.