"...a wind so strong there are whitecaps in the outhouses."
This is a busy week for me. I was teaching a workshop on Monday through Wednesday noon on Zoom, but I'm in Laramie. The Wyoming Engineering and Surveying Society (WESS) meeting starts at noon on Wednesday (today) through Friday noon in Casper, WY. They don't overlap, but they are back to back. And I've got two important meetings on Thursday and I really wanted to be there for the Wednesday noon lunch. My last workshop session on Tuesday was over at 2:00 and then there is a tutorial session at 6:30 that night before the exams on Wednesday morning which I proctor. That would give me enough time to drive the 3 hours to Casper. But.....
Khalid Ksaibati, a transportation professor and director of the T2 Transportation Center, and I teach a workshop for Highway Technicians dealing with testing of Soils and Aggregates used for embankments, concrete and asphalt. We've taught it three times a year for over 25 years now. Like everything else in academe, we went to Zoom when Covid hit. It has really worked out well for us. The students, who are mostly highway inspectors from Wyoming and surrounding states, used to have come to Laramie, sit in a classroom (which they hated) and stay for at least 2 nights. And if the weather isn't good, as it can be in December and January when we teach two of the classes (and May for that matter), it can be pretty miserable driving (like it was for me last week). Now, they can work from their office, testing lab or home. And I don't have to drive over to campus and try to find a parking spot. I have a photo from our transportation lab as background so they don't even have to see my home office behind me.
Everything was going fine until Tuesday morning about 11:00. The wind (remember the blizzard from last Thursday, it's still the same wind) started blowing and WYDOT (Wyoming Department of Transportation) closed the highway from Laramie to Casper. And not just the straight shot driving through Medicine Bow and the Shirley Basin, but also I-25 from Cheyenne and US287 and US22 from Rawlins to Muddy Gap to Casper. I kept checking all Tuesday evening and woke up at 5:30 on Wednesday and everything was still closed. I finally decided that I would drive from Laramie to Burns on the Nebraska border, drive north through Torrington and Lusk, over to Douglas and finally Casper, making it a 5-1/2 hour trip instead of 2-1/2. I would leave as soon as the workshop exams ended. But at noon, WYDOT opened the road through Shirley Basin and I'll have a straight shot north. YEA!!! They are only predicting winds high enough to blow over light and high profile vehicles and blowing snow on the road and slick in areas (not just spots). We drive like that all the time around here so no big deal. Well, testing finished an hour late, and eating lunch and getting stuff together and email took another hour, and then I was tired so a nap took another hour, so I finally left at 3:15.
I'll finish this when I get to Casper.
Success!!! The drive was not without interest. Discretion suggested that I drive the 4-wheel drive pickup instead of the little car. It was the right choice. So, I started driving north out of Laramie and the road was dry so far. But before I even got to the Sybille Canyon cutoff, an engine light lit up on the dashboard. Shades of the overheating light on the Sonic last Thursday. I pulled over and found the instructions to say it could be any number of things that need to checked by a certified mechanic. So I gave my dealership a call and asked if they would be able to run a check on the light and let me know if I could still drive to Casper tonight. "Sure, come on in." When I got there, the service manager put a OBD scanner on the plug and everything that came up pointed to the battery. She said, "It's been so cold, it may have just needed to get warmed up. We'll reset the data storage and see if it comes up again."
So, the tech cleared the memory, turned the engine back on and no light. She said that it will probably be ok now, but if it comes on again, get in touch. And off I went. I was back to my turn around point in less than an hour.
By the time I got to Bosler (18 miles north), the wind started blowing again. This is no surprise. The map below, from the
Wyoming Geology website, is of southeastern Wyoming. It shows the Wyoming Wind Corridor. There are three important points here, LAR is Laramie, MB is Medicine Bow and CPR is Casper. The most direct road to Casper from Laramie is through Medicine Bow and the Shirley Basin between Shirley Mountain and the Laramie Range.
[Medicine Bow is significant for two reasons. First, it is the site of the Virginian Hotel, based on the novel "The Virginian" by Owen Wister which was published in 1902 and is arguably the first "western" novel. Second, when the Bureau of Reclamation wanted to test the feasibility of a large wind generator in the 1970s, it selected Medicine Bow because of its fast and continuous wind speeds through the wind corridor. So, it is not surprising that the roads in the area, including I80 (which goes from Cheyenne, CYS to Laramie LAR to Rawlins RAW), are often closed. The weather on that section of the I80 is so bad, it has the nickname "The Snow Chi Minh Trail."
(The Bureau sold the tower after they were done testing. It was purchased by Bill Young, who had worked for the Bureau and was an electrical engineer. I knew Bill through the Wyoming Engineering Society and wrangled an invitation from him to go up in the tower for my brother-in-law, Wilbur and I. It was lucky, because a few months later, a windstorm caused one of the blades to blow off and basically destroyed the tower. It had to be demolished soon after that. While Bill bought it for cheap, he never got any co-generation payments from it like he would have 15 years later.)
One last piece. The area shown on the map as the Big Hollow is actually what this webpage is about. The Big Hollow is a wind-blown deflation (or depression) zone caused by wind blowing out the sand over 10,000 years ago. At 11 miles long, 4 miles wide and 150-200 feet deep, it is the largest such depression in the United States and the second largest in the world. The opening paragraph of the webpage states that the wind is "so strong that there are whitecaps in the outhouses." ]
The wind and road through Shirley Basin lived up to its billing. It was always patchy, but snow packed and icy and in a couple of places, actually blew the bed of the truck to the side enough I had to correct for it. It was not an easy drive, but not the worst I've had through there either. The speed limit is 70 mph and I got passed by several vehicles because I was doing between 45 and 60 over most of it, until I got behind a snow plow, and then I just followed him the Shirley Rim Rest Area, on the north edge of the basin.
This is one of my three favorite rest areas in Wyoming. It's 47 miles to Casper and 46 miles to Medicine Bow. Even on the best of days, it is a haven to see. And by 7:00, only one other person showed up while I was there. And the rest of the way to Casper was dry.
I stopped and had a burger as I drove into town and got to the hotel. (To those that know, it is the old Parkway Plaza, which has been "extensively reconditioned" since the last time we were here, thank goodness. We'll see how much tomorrow.) As I was leaving the desk, five former students of mine walked in the door, including Josh Fuller, who was the student leader for our Engineers Without Borders group when we worked in Mbita, Kenya on Lake Victoria in 2009/10. They were just coming in from dinner and may have had an adult beverage or three or four and were heading to the hotel bar to cap the evening off.
Let the party, and WESS, begin!!!
Comments
Post a Comment