Chance of Afternoon Showers

Here in the South at this time of year, the weather is predictably sunny and hot every day, with the exception of about 20 minutes every afternoon when big black clouds roll in suddenly and leave just as quickly. Sometimes it rains, but more often than not the clouds just pass over.

On Friday around 2pm I had to take a trip up to Alpharetta to meet up with my boss briefly to pick up my check. I hadn't driven my car for a week and had been cooped up in the house working for several days. I was anxious to put the top down on the convertible and enjoy the outdoors.

As I approached the on-ramp to highway 400, I saw clouds to the north. It was that time of the day. The sun was out and the clouds seemed distant. I'd been in this situation a dozen times before (top-down, clouds ahead) without getting rained on, so I continued onto the highway. These clouds were gray and seemed harmless - not like the ominous black clouds that sway me to pull over and put the top up.

A minute later, however, as I approached the toll booth, my windshield was suddenly spattered with a handful of big round drops. I was in the far left lane (the cruise lane at the toll station), so I didn't have a choice but to stay there.

On the other side of the booth, the clouds opened up and very quickly poured buckets on me and my car, top down. It all happened so fast. I made it over to the right lane and onto the shoulder as soon as I could do so safely. It was raining laterally from behind, so I realized that this wasn't going to be a shower that I could just quickly drive through with the top down.

Sooner or later, I knew this would happen to me. There I was on the shoulder getting poured on as the electric top slowly came up out of the trunk and over my head. It only takes about 30 seconds to put the top up, but it seemed a lot longer. My white 'parachute' capri pants were soaked.

I merged back onto the highway and within a minute the downpour had stopped. I looked around at the interior of my car - the seats were all wet. I started laughing. Here I was in my wet car on my way to see my boss (and meet a couple other gals on our team for the first time) when I found myself with see-through pants. I couldn't show up looking like that.

The sun was shining brightly, so I pulled off at another exit and put the top down again. It was about 95 degrees, so I hoped I would dry out pretty quickly.

Sure enough, 15 minutes later when I arrived at my destination, the car was dry, and so was I. Well, that's one way to clean out the interior!