Prairie Storms

As I got back on the freeway yesterday, heading north into Iowa, it was my intention to get to Council Bluffs and see the reconstructed Kanesville Tabernacle (where Brigham Young was sustained as the president of the Church in December of 1847). The sky ahead of me was the blackest I have ever seen, so I turned on the radio to get a weather report. Much to my surprise (and horror), I was heading directly into a massive thunder storm, complete with funnel clouds and tornadoes touching down in its path. The spokesperson from the National Weather Advisory was telling everyone in the path of the storm to get to safe shelter and get off the roads. At that point I was surrounded by nothing but farmland (no shelter of any kind in sight), so I made an instant decision to not go to Council Bluffs, but head directly to Omaha (a little further west) to hopefully get out of the path of the storm and to my hotel for the night.
It was a harrowing drive, listening to the radio and watching the clouds ahead of me. I did manage to get out of the path of the tornadoes, but I entered the center of the thunderstorm just as I was coming into mid-Omaha. It became dark as the middle of the night and the rain was coming down vertically (very windy) in torrential sheets. ( I later learned that 2.5 inches of rain fell in about 45 minutes.) All I could do was inch my way off the freeway, where I turned into a residential neighborhood and pulled into someone's driveway to sit it out, still with the radio on of course. After about half an hour, the sky started to lighten and the torrents of water became distinguishable as rain. I drove a block to a gas station to find someone who could tell me where I was on the map and how to get to my hotel. As it turned out, I was only ten minutes from the hotel and by the time I got there, the rain had almost stopped entirely.
Later that evening (I didn't go out again) I started to think about how vulnerable I had been. I was in unfamiliar weather in unfamiliar territory and no place to go for safety. I thought of those early pioneers setting out in wagons and handcarts from this same place, also unfamiliar to them, and dealing with this same kind of weather. They had no buildings or cars for protection, no radio with meteorologists telling them exactly where the storm was going and at what speed and no gas station where they could stop and ask directions. I knew how frightened I had been and could only imagine what it must have been like for them.