Driving Through the Hwy 395 Dust Storm

*record scratch* Yep! That's me. I bet you're wondering how I got here.

This photo was taken sitting on the shoulder of Highway 395 between Tri-Cities and Ritzville, just a few miles north of Connell.

It was the most scared I've felt in a long time on the road.

Well, scared may not be the right word. But this situation certainly put me in full-focus mode. I had to use every ounce of my attention and 'smart thinking' skills to the test.

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Driving in windy conditions isn't something you take on a driving test. Much like how they never force you to drive on icy roads or driving at night, they just don't have it on the driving test. You figure it out when you're stuck in that situation.

To take this back many years ago I used to live in a flat part of Idaho where we'd get black ice every year. I've also driven through heavy snowfall conditions. Both were terrifying.

This was worse, and it wasn't even for that long of a period.

Why were people driving through a dust storm on purpose?

Well, it's not like anyone planned for it.

If people live around there and are maybe used to it sometimes, that's something. I didn't even consider it. I've taken the road between Ritzville and Tri-Cities several times when I'm driving back from Spokane to get to Yakima. Sometimes I take the Vantage bridge area but in this case, as coincidence would have it, we spent the day in Spokane on Saturday and took Highway 395 to Pasco as I had an event I had to attend in Tri-Cities on Sunday.

No worries, I've done this drive plenty of times without issue.

As it turns out, there was plenty to worry about.

Driving through wind

For a while, the roads were just windy. You could feel the wind pushing your car as you keep realigning to drive straight. With the high winds we also saw plenty of tumbleweeds. I've never had an issue with hitting them, like no popped tires or anything, but it's still not fun to pull the weeds from you cars grill.

Along the way there would be some times when some dust would kick up and blow across the road, but nothing really to worry about.

That is, of course, until there was a lot to worry about.

Though it was mostly clear for a while, just windy, the visibility dropped drastically. It got to the point where it was very hazy, I couldn't see very far in front of me and noticed cars immediately on both shoulders of the road with their hazards on.

I thought to myself 'well, they must know something I don't so I better join the crowd' and immediately pulled over to the shoulder as well.

Very Important to Move Off the Main Road

Some will still continue to drive. Even at a slower pace, it's still unsafe as it doesn't take much for the dust storm to drop visibility in an instant and no amount of lights will have you see through the cloud of dust.

Always drive with prepared items in car

It's something most of us know in Washington State, but you never know. Maybe sure you always travel with extra water, snacks, and a full tank of gas. Even pulling off to the side of the road was fine for a while. We could wait it out if needed as we also didn't know how long this was going to last.

We also didn't know how many miles this dust storm was.

I looked at Google Maps that tracks when there's delays on the road due to construction or anything else. It had a bit of a red line, but not much. We saw it cleared by pretty well by Connell, but that was still a few miles away.

In the meantime, we wait. That's when I snapped this photo. Many cars pulled off as well, but some attempted to go through.

After a few minutes a very large 18-wheeler started traveling at a slow pace. From there many of the cars formed kind of a 'conga line' behind it figuring it would be the guide to safety. I didn't join at this time.

A little bit later, maybe by 5 minutes, it did actually kind of lighten up a bit where I could see at least a quarter of a mile so a few of us started to drive again. Not the speed limit, and we all kept our distance, but at least we were moving forward.

That's when I could see the accident on the northbound road that was shared around social media over the weekend.

I also saw the aftermath of an accident on my side in the southbound lane, but that car was off the side of the road and out of the way.

I didn't make it too far until the wind picked up worse than before. Visibility wasn't even two-car length so off to the shoulder I go again to wait it out even more. I pulled over to the shoulder and, while on the shoulder, I moved forward a little to allow room for another car to get behind me if needed.

It was at that moment I figured, since there's nobody in front of me, I'll just keep creeping forward on the shoulder a little more as there was nobody else there and I definitely wanted to avoid the main road. I didn't have to creep too far forward as, all of a sudden, it lightened up almost completely. Once that happened I got on the main road without issue and made it the rest of the way to Pasco.

There was a giant line of cars stuck in the northbound lane and, the closer I got to Tri-Cities, the more cars were heading that direction. I felt bad I couldn't say what happened and they should turn around and figure something else out.

All in all, a pretty scary experience. One I hope I never have to do ever again.

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