Getting to my daughter’s house was smooth sailing but the drive home was long and unsettling. It snowed Saturday in eastern Missouri so we hunkered down and worked on a jigsaw puzzle she purchased from the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka.
I kept an eye on the NWS Kansas City Twitter feed noting that a storm was expected to hit KCMO around 9:00 AM on Monday. My thinking was to hit the road very early in the morning and drive into the storm there. On Monday the storm had already hit and was moving east towards me along Interstate 70.
East of Columbia I drove into the storm. It was not white out conditions but the snow was nice and wet and the roads became icy and snow packed, but well-traveled, and MODOT had the plows out. My daughter texted me that I-70 was closed between Columbia and Kansas City but I hoped that the wreckage would be cleared and the highway reopened before I got there.
As luck would have it the highway was opened back up but that stretch was littered with tractor trailer rigs and passenger cars in the median and off the side of the highway. About 40 miles from Kansas City the NWS office said that another wave of snow was moving into the metro area. It was getting dark so I checked into a hotel in Higginsville hoping that conditions would improve knowing that it is easier to drive in the snow during daylight.
The drive through Kansas City Tuesday morning was okay but slow-going with ice on the roadway in places and rush hour traffic filled with folks hurrying to their destinations. As I hoped, the highway dried out west of there and I was back up to the speed limit from there to Limon.
I had decided to drive all the way to Denver to avoid the storm there that was forecast to move in after midnight. The storm moved into the area early and I drove into it just east of Bennet which was a bummer.
The Kia Niro handled well in the crappy conditions. It is a nice EV but the one Avis rented me did not have battery conditioning for charging so I was at the mercy of battery temperature which made it slow to charge much of the time.
I had driven the route in my Leaf before which required a CHAdeMO connecter so I missed the proliferation of fast chargers along I-70. You can be assured that you will find sufficient places to fuel up your EV all along the route.
Next up, the CRWUA 2025 Conference in Las Vegas December 16-19, 2025.