There was some snow on the ground this morning, but I decided to drive to the retreat venue anyway because where I was headed (100km south) weather forecast had just rain. The retreat went well but during our lunch break we discovered that a huge snow storm was hitting Rome. People left work and were already stuck in traffic, my sister called me to inform me that the road from Rome to my house was shut down. We decided to finish our program hoping that the situation would be better in the next few hours. We left the venue at 5:15 I got to halfway from my house in just 45 minutes with almost no traffic and then the nightmare began, I was on the belt route around Rome headed north and to cover 14 km it took almost 5 hours, there was snow coming down hard and freezing immediately. Many people left their car on the shoulder of the freeway and started walking home.
When I eventually left the belt route at 10pm on the highway there was no traffic and I thought that in 45 minutes I would be home and with so much snow a nice run before going to bed would be awesome. I was wrong, I got stuck for another 2 hours with lots of other cars because several truck were blocking the road and only cars with snowtires or chains could still pass on a steep ramp. After passing this obstacle it was already 12:30 am and It was hard to maintain my concetration driving alone during an incredible snow storm with wind blowing hard and almost no visibility. I have never seen anything like that during my seven years in Utah. With 5 km to go two cars were still in the middle of the road I stopped and they told me that the road was "impassable" because there were snowdriftts 5 feet tall in the middle of the road. I drove back for 4km reached a road that was detouring the place exposed to the wind but there was no guarantee about the conditions of that road, because there were several bushes and fences the snowdrifts were on both sides but the center of the road was relatively clean, the only obstacle was a snowdrifts right before the intersection with the highway I sped up, "surfed" and floated on top of the snow landed on more packed snow on the main road. Five more minutes and I was home. I felt really blessed several times I thought I was going to spend the night in the car and many people did that. I got home at 1:15am, I was hungry and thirsty, but after changing the batteries of my camera I went out to take pictures of the largest snow storm I ever witnessed in Italy.
I had electricity but no water and phone line.
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