Last Sunday, April 10, 2011, while chasing storms across central Wisconsin on a moderate risk day, my three teammates and I found ourselves stranded in a traffic bottleneck on eastbound I-90 just west of Oakdale. Ordinarily I would have viewed the situation as merely an inconvenience, but with a tornado-warned supercell bearing down on us, and with the radar showing pronounced rotation making a beeline for our location, the matter elicited somewhat greater concern. We could see what appeared to be the mesocyclone advancing over the hilltops. But we couldn’t do a thing about it, nor could any of the several hundred other vehicles that were backed up for a mile or two in both directions, courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Fortunately, nothing tragic happened. But it could have. The storm wasn’t merely Doppler-warned–it produced a number of tornadoes. We encountered some of its handiwork later on in Arkdale, consisting of a good quarter-mile-wide swath of shredded trees and badly damaged houses. Had the storm gone tornadic a few miles prior, it would have gobbled up helpless motorists like a giant Pac Man in an M&M plant.

What highway department contractor made the outrageous decision to hold up traffic in a way that put hundreds of people directly in harm’s way with no escape? The storms didn’t form in an information vacuum. Three days prior, the Storm Prediction Center had already outlooked the area as a moderate risk. Forecasters had been consistently harping about the possibility of strong, long-lived tornadoes. The weather was hardly a surprise that caught road repair team leaders unaware. So my inevitable conclusion is that some boneheaded foreman was so hell-bent on getting the job done at all costs that he or she willfully exposed hundreds of drivers to a potentially deadly weather event.

Such action is worse than irresponsible; it borders on criminal. I do not want the highway department making dispassionate decisions that risk my life and a multitude of others on behalf of a DOT schedule. How much time would have been lost rather than saved had the worst happened and the focus shifted from road work to emergency response? With scores of crumpled vehicles strewn along the highway and scattered across the field, how would the Department of Transportation have explained a common-sense-be-damned approach that resulted in multiple deaths and injuries?

The incident I’ve cited is just one of innumerable highway closures that occur all across the Midwest due to road work that continues despite tornado watches and warnings. It’s not the first time I’ve encountered the practice, just the most infuriating, and yes, the scariest because of the immediacy of the storm. I doubt anything I say here is going to change the mindset responsible for such scenarios, but it deserves to be called out for its life-endangering lunacy, and this is as good a place as any to do so. It’s my blog, and right now I feel like using it to rant.

WisDOT, what on earth were you thinking, assuming that you were thinking at all? Get a clue: Public safety trumps your deadlines. Evidently someone in your ranks felt differently last Sunday, choosing to put hundreds of motorists in jeopardy rather than suspend road work on account of a tornado warning. Does that kind of decision accurately reflect your policy? If so, then those of you in charge ought to be flogged at noon in the middle of the town square.

However, a more constructive alternative would be for you to re-examine your guidelines for road work during severe weather, and to make whatever changes are necessary in order to put the public’s interests ahead of your own.