My wife called me on my cellphone to warn me about route 3 south this morning.  I was at a gas station in Littleton refilling the windshield washer fluid tank on Vanessa, before continuing on to Burlington via routes 495 and 3.  She called to warn me of "whiteout conditions".  I glanced up at the sky, a beautiful azure, clear as crystal and furrowed my brow.  "Whiteout conditions?" ...

For those of you who don't live in New England or aren't familiar with Route 3 it is a highway route that extends in one form or another from the northernmost tip of New Hampshire to the Sagamore Bridge on Cape Cod, where it merges into route 6 which continues out to the end of the cape.  Many folks who live north of Boston travel route 3 south in the morning to get to work and this is the part I usually have to deal with, from exit 30 at 495 to exit 26 at Burlington.

This section of route 3 was recently widened to improve the impossibly congested travel conditions.  The change has been remarkable... the road is a pleasure to drive on nowadays.  Traffic jams are infrequent.  It's smooth sailing.

Anyway, we've had two snowstorms in the past week that have dumped a combined 3+ inches of snow on the ground.  No big deal really, the major roadways are clear.  What is unusual is that the temperature hasn't gotten above freezing since the January thaw, and in fact has remained quite low (sub 20's, or below -6 for you celsius fans), and as a result, for the most part this snow has remained a completely dry powder... not melting in any significant way.

My wife informed me that, due to light wind this morning, extremely dense clouds of snow powder were being blown off trees, and then crossing route 3 from east to west.  It was particularly bad in wooded areas.  Within these clouds of snow, visibility was practically zero.

"Okay hon, thanks for the warning." I said thinking to myself, "Ah, how bad could it really be?  It couldn't really be 'whiteout'."

I finished filling my windshield fluid tank and got back on 495 north.  I passed the first accident just before the exit onto 3.  It was a four-car pileup, a lot of front and rear damage suggesting cars colliding end to end.  That happens at exit ramps sometimes.  Someone's looking down at their radio or something when the guy in front begins braking.  CRUNCH.  Visibility seemed to be fine so I wrote it off as user error.

I passed the second accident after getting on route 3 south.  It was *another* four car pileup.  There were broken bits of glass, plastic, and other detritus scattered all over the road.  Visibility was not good here, but not because of the snow.  The highway was wet with melt (the roads are all salted here) and the position of the sun was creating an intense solar glare off the road that made it hard to see the brake lights of the vehicles ahead of you.

About a minute after passing the second accident, I passed the third, which appeared to involve two cars.  This one was really bad, one of the cars was caved in from the rear all the way up to the back seat.

About two hundred yards up the road, in the far left lane under a bridge, was accident number four... there appeared to be only one car left in this accident, which was hurriedly being attached to a towtruck.  For the fourth time I drove over bits of glass, metal, and plastic scattered on the road.  It began to seem somewhat surreal to me, like driving through a weird battlezone... car vs. car, driver vs. nature.

The solar glare was brutal, and there was some snow blowing off the trees, but it wasn't what I would call "whiteout", more like a light fog.  I began to suspect that this was simply an exaggeration that perhaps was aired on the radio, and my wife out of loving concern had passed it on to me.

Clearly some other drivers took absolutely no message from passing 7 wrecked cars, as shortly thereafter a man driving a pickup truck extremely recklessly passed me on the right, then cut me off in front (while his right directional was still on) then cut off the person who was trying to pass me on the left (with his right directional STILL on) while narrowly missing the person in front of me, and then swerved around in front of them and sped off (with his right directional still on.) Stupid fucker.

I could only shake my head at that display of idiocy.  Given than people were driving like idiots, and the glare was bad, I slowed down a tad, and put some distance between myself and the car in front of me, fished my camera out of my pocket and snapped a few quick pictures which I will upload later.

A few minutes later I noted that my exit was only about a mile away.  That's when I saw it.  A dense cloud of snowdust, moving out of the trees on my right and crossing the highway ahead of me.  This one was really thick!

FOOMP.

In an instant I was enveloped in the cloud and I suddenly realized that for the first time in my life I was seeing real whiteout.  The road was basically gone.  I could just make out faintly the white dashed lines immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) in front of my vehicle.  I couldn't see the edges of the highway.  More importantly  I couldn't see a hint the other car that had entered the cloud about 50 feet ahead of me.

I thought to myself "What if he steps on his brakes?  I mean Jesus, there's no way he can see any better in this than I can."  I have to say, there's nothing quite like moving at 60 MPH and not being able to see a blessed thing.

I started slowing down, not rapidly, because there was another car behind me... somewhere.  I had all my exterior lights on, I just do that out of habit now.  I recall reading somewhere that having your headlights on during the daytime makes it less likely for you to be in an accident.  The whiteout lasted perhaps about 8 seconds, but it seemed like an eternity.  When I emerged from the cloud the car in front was now perhaps 20 feet away and I had slowed to about 49 MPH.

Now for the scary math: my average speed in the cloud was 54.5 MPH.  At that speed, in one second, my car went about 80 feet.  I was in the cloud by my estimation for 8 seconds.  This means I drove 640 feet without being able to see anything.  That's more than 2 football fields; more than a tenth of a mile.

When I emerged from the cloud back into the brilliant solar glare I was quite certain that I did not want to do that again. I moved over into the right lane and noticed that my exit was just up ahead.  I gratefully pulled off and drove the last few miles to work.

Scary commute.  Drive carefully folks.

EDIT: The promised pictures.  I don't have any of the actual whiteout but I have some of solar glare and snowclouds.