Wisconsin to Oklahoma

I picked up a load yesterday in Janesville, WI going to Ardmore, OK. Was supposed to pick it up at 2pm. I went on in and they loaded me at 9am so was able to drive across Illinois and down into Missouri before I had to stop for the night. This was important because of the blizzard rolling out of the Texas panhandle and right up through where I was going.

It was a matter of timing and points out how many things I rely on when it comes to weather and trip planning. First I read USA Today every day and watch the weather page on where I am going. Then on XM Radio there is a 24/7 weather channel that tracks storm systems, I have the NOAH weather radio channels on truck radio for local forecasts, and finally I pull it up on my laptop. The one on laptop is most important. The weather.com page you can pull up the weather forcast hour-to-hour on any city on your route. When I left out this morning I knew that the rain was not supposed to start turning over to mixed precipitation until around 7 or 8am in Joplin, MO. I was going to be able to get through there at 7am. The snow was moving in from Oklahoma City which was getting pretty heavy snow. The storm was rolling up I-44, the direction I had to go. Knowing all this, I turned south on US-69 down through eastern Oklahoma keeping the front to my west. Doing this I only ran through a short snow storm this morning of about 10 to 15 miles wide. It was heavy too. The temperature dropped 5 degrees at that moment, but once I got 15 miles further down the road I got out the other side of the cold front again, the temperature got back up to 38 deg and back to all rain.

I made it on down to Atoka, OK and cut across some two lane roads to Ardmore. I came in the back way and dropped the load a day early. No snow or icy roads. If I had been running about one hour behind the schedule I set for myself I would have hit it bad coming out of Joplin, MO. That would have slowed me down letting the front run right over me, and as hard as it was raining, once it turned to snow it was going to be bad. It worked out.

Now I set here 290 miles from the house and no freight until Monday. Supposed to be headed to house for home time, so set here, set there. Will post some pictures later tonight or in the morning of some of the trip down here.