My plan was to go straight home. Didn’t happen. From my car radio: “DON’T go out if you can avoid it! Accidents everywhere. The QE II highway is closed.”
The morning started off fine. The City of Calgary has no nearby suburbs with separate mayors. Instead, this city on the plain keeps expanding. To meet my breakfast friends, on the far side of the city, I had to take a highway around the northern outskirts: the “ring road.” My only morning problem had been an unusual fog obscuring the exit signs, but I still arrived on time.
Breakfast was nice. As we ate the snow began—steadily, heavily, vertically.
We had to scrape our cars for it was the freeze-on-contact sort of snow. My friends suggested I drive far to south before cutting over and then north again. Lacking a map, my concern was that this would mean many traffic lights, many chances for things to “go unexpected.” Better to “keep it simple,” going back the way I came. Nightfall would be in four hours.
My first stressor was when I drove the curving ramp onto the highway behind two pickup trucks—we all had to stop dead as a wave of snow, blown from a passing diesel, obscured our vision. Luckily the big Ford behind me stopped too. Well, now we were committed. Onto the highway we went. Increased to half the posted speed. Our problem was not merely vertical snow—the highway had broad fields on both sides, producing a horizontal blizzard.
Three lanes. I took the middle. For the first blessed ten minutes there was only a snow fog. A braver man than I came up in the passing lane with his four-way flashers on. Everyone put their four-ways on. Folks moved left to the exit lanes. Soon I was alone in a white expanse. The car radio gave me the news: A freak storm was in progress, rare and unforeseeable, called a “prairie clipper,” and the ring road—my road—had many accidents. I thought, “Maybe the wrecks are all on the south side of the ring.”
After the first few kilometres—and the driving was never again that easy, slowing to one-fifth speed—poor visibility meant I was “overdriving” my headlights. The term comes from night driving, meaning that if my lights illuminated a deer, or a stalled car, I would not have enough braking distance to stop. On I drove.
Two lanes.
Sometimes, to avoid “overdriving” I would have to slow to a crawl, out of sight of the poor guy behind me. Sometimes, a storm gust would be so bad, visibility zero, that the sensible thing would be to stop dead. Really? And never get home? Hoping I would soon be back to very poor visibility, I thought I might as well keep driving, stuck in the fast lane now—the right was snow-covered.
Once I glimpsed two cars to the side, police tape around them. Only once did I see an abandoned car. These derelicts, I reasoned, could be from before the storm. On I drove.
To “sensibly” escape by exiting onto strange city streets would only mean more white horror, and getting home hours after dark. I continued.
Nine kilometres an hour.
I was in a grim state, neither hopeful nor groaning, when I came upon semi-trailers in both lanes stopped dead. Cars arrived, gathering behind. I didn’t groan. At last some trucks started up, some stayed still. A couple times we all stopped, and each time, as I tried to pull away, my car went CRUMP! Maybe my tires had frozen to the pavement, or my wheel wells had filled. Meanwhile, I was diverting all my fan heat to the windshield, to keep the oncoming snow from freezing.
A file of cars passed me… At last I was no longer driving blind and alone, for I was behind a small flatbed carrying a forklift. I stuck with him, near and far, never crashing, because although his lower tail lights, only a meter off the pavement, were obscured by blowing snow, his plate sized red lights over the cab remained clear. Usually.
When he moved to the right I realized the road was a three lane again.
Dusk.
Home soon.
I live near an exit; I got off.
My mood changed from grim to relieved, detouring to the corner store for chocolate and beer.
Once home, I hastened to e-mail my breakfast chums I had survived the “prairie clipper.”
I could hear the wind shaking my building, but I was safe at last.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Calgary
January
2026
Blog note: Over the last week my site has registered hits from all sorts of exotic far flung countries. Maybe somebody has linked to me on Facebook, but I can’t tell. I don’t expect anyone to say hello (But I wish they would) because back on my old blog, no one said hello whenever my stats showed an essay being translated several times, perhaps by students.
Sean, your ordeal (which thank goodness came to a good end) reminds me of the worst driving experience of my life, on a Sunday, on an interstate, between exits that were very far apart, no snow, but with the road having turned turned to sheer ice. Heavy traffic, moving at maybe 5 mph (more or less 9kh). We got to the exit, took it, stayed the night a hotel, and found out that school had already been canceled for Monday. Our kids were happy.
In snowy times, there’s nothing better than keeping a safe distance behind a large vehicle, or, with luck, a salt truck. I’m always happy to let them lead the way.
Michael, I’m pleased that my piece inspired a comment.
I guess for you and I on such drives, a certain zen focus is needed, because if we relax even a tiny bit, then it’s a disaster.
I wrote this piece because my breakfast chum, when I sent the e-mail, suggested I expand on it. (Yes, a fellow writer)
Something that only occurred to me days later:
I normally don’t drive that far west, because I always turn north onto the QE II or the old IA (Crowchild Trail) Well, that morning I had gone west over a broad river valley, where there were no shoulders to the road. Luckily I forget about that! And on the way back I had no idea I was going over a deadly expanse. I didn’t even noticed the incline down and over.
Or maybe I did, and was too grimly focused to allow it into my long term memory as I drove.
I just found you from your comment on Athena Scalzi’s post about nice moments with strangers. [I’m not from an exotic far-flung country, but a scary way-too-close country just south of yours.]
Debbie, thank you for commenting.
It feels like a bright smile from a stranger.
I think (from counting other blogs) that only one person in a thousand readers comments, so I like how you overcame inertia and stage fright.
Someone told me the far flung countries are merely robots. Now I am getting only a few of them, BUT lots of “supposed hits” from the USA… but my stats, for the first time ever, are showing a mismatch: few hits on my home page… so I guess the US hits are another version of robots.