Today’s NASCAR race in Bristol is on rain-delay, as I write this; three weeks ago we were at the Daytona 500, which was also rain-delayed. So it’s the perfect time to reminisce and tell you the Rest of the Story of our 2014 Daytona 500 adventure. 🙂
Photo by The Guy With The Hard Card
Where I last left us in Part One of this story, we were standing under the cover of the speedway grandstands with our friends Tucker and Lisa, listening to the din of pouring rain thundering onto the aluminum grandstands.
It was incredibly crowded; 100,000 race fans in a mile-long grandstand are a LOT of people! Everyone scattered to take shelter, and we watched vehicles and people alike pass by us. We were on ground level, waiting for the pouring rain to let up.
The track had been lost long before now. By “lost”, I mean that there’s no hope of racing until the rain stops, and the jet dryers can do their job. If the rain stopped right at this minute, it would be at least an hour and a half (thanks to the Air Titans) before the race restarted.
This was NASCAR_WXMAN’s 2:38 p.m. radar tweet showing the severe weather just north of us.
As we stood there, the Speedway began broadcasting messages urging fans to clear the grandstands and take shelter from severe weather in the Daytona area.
At 2:57 p.m., I received a text urging us to clear the grandstand and secure campsites due to severe weather in the area.
“I don’t know about you guys, but the last place I want to be is stuck here in a panicking crowd,” my husband said. Images of being trampled went through all our minds. We all agreed, and as soon as the rain let up, we made a break for it.
It was still peppering rain. We had about a 15-minute walk back to our camper, and we walked and/or jogged as fast as we could. There was a lot of standing water everywhere; it had rained so hard for so long it really didn’t have anywhere to go.
This was the first time I’d regretted my choice of footwear.
I’d worn my rubber Croc sandals; they are comfortable, easy to walk in, and perfect on a hot day. It wasn’t so much the shoes were hard to move in; it was the fact that I’d lotioned my feet well that morning. Now that my feet were wet, they were like little slippery seals.
I could barely keep my shoes on! My feet kept slide sideways, one way or the other, and because my feet are the only part of me that is narrow, occasionally they would slide forward through the straps until the front half of my foot was exposed at the top.
I tried taking my shoes off, but the pavement was rough. Hampered by my shoes and concerned about the weather, it seemed like it took forever to get back to camp.
About 100 yards from the trailer, heavy rain began to fall again. My foot slid completely through my shoe again. I stopped to fix it, gave up, and hobbled on to the trailer.
We looked like drowned rats. 😀
Our friends Peggy and John were already there. They’d come back earlier at the first sign of rain.
At 3:07 p.m., I received another text from the Speedway advising us that we were under a tornado warning.
Although we’d cleaned up camp earlier that day, we’d left the trailer tailgate open. With the threat of severe weather imminent, Jimmy braved the pouring rain to close it while John helped him from the inside.
In the meantime, Speedway fire department personnel drove through the campground with bullhorns, advising anyone in camp to get in your vehicle and fasten seat belts.
This is a picture someone tweeted of a water spout, although the National Weather Service said it was too far away to confirm.
We debated what to do for a second, but looking around, we saw all the items in camp spaces around us which could become missiles in a high wind. A camper is just not the best place to be in a severe weather situation.
Jimmy tossed on dry clothes, he and John grabbed the dogs, and the four six of us piled into the pickup, started the engine and turned the radio on.
There was silence for a minute.
“Should I go get a cooler?” Jimmy asked. He darted in the trailer and returned two minutes later. We had no idea where any of our fellow campers were. Tucker and Lisa opted to head for a restaurant to be inside a building; we saw them drive by.
I texted friends to see where they were, and to see if they were safe. Most were still over at the Speedway.
We sat in the truck, watched it rain, and toasted life. And adventures in Daytona.
Potholes. Jet-dryer crashes. The first ever rain-out. Wow.
This whole adventure seemed sort of surreal. Daytona is, if nothing else, full of surprises.
Ultimately, we all decided that if it was our time to leave this world, we were at least all together. Jimmy and I were together, we had our dogs with us, and two of our best friends who also happen to be our dogs’ godparents were there. We were all doing something we loved. What more could you ask for, really?
At 3:37 p.m., I received a text that the coast was clear and that the threat of severe weather had left the Speedway.
Thank goodness.
John and Peggy headed back to St. Augustine around 5 p.m. After the “36 Hours of Daytona” two years ago, they opted to watch the rest of it at home. Our friends Eugene and John also left, since they were planning on heading for him the following morning. (Gene, always resourceful, had found a sheltered dry spot in the Speedway; he and John remained completely dry the whole time!)
The following day, the Weather Channel posted an unflattering article about the Speedway and the lack of notice to the fans.
Would I have left the Speedway earlier if I’d known there was lightning nearby? I’d like to think so, but at the end of the day, who really knows?
In spite of several years of emergency management and planning experience, we still found ourselves in this position. It was a series of decisions – and not all of them bad – based on the information that we had at the time that put us in this situation.
This storm blew up fast.
At approximately 8:30 p.m., the green flag dropped and we were racing again. With an ongoing threat of rain, drivers weren’t holding back. It was a really exciting race, in which the lead changes and green flag passing broke track records. Once the race got beyond the halfway point, whoever was in the lead when it rained would be the winner.
You just never know. That’s Daytona. 🙂
