I don’t much care for driving through thunderstorms, but it is sometimes necessary when trying to get from point A to B.

Driving through the same thunderstorm three times, however, is hell with water — lots of water.

Happened like this. We left Sunday for our drive from Floyd County to Arlington. Got away later than hoped and, just north of Roanoke, ran into the thunderstorm that swept in from the west.

Ran came down in torrents, the wind whipped the Wrangler from side to side and we hydroplaned more than once on the sheets of water that swept across I-81. Traffic slowed at times to less than 30 mph. Fog descended with the rain, driving visibility down to just beyond the hood.

We had a short window to clear the storm near Harrisonburg but had to stop for gas and the storm swept over us once again while we waited in line at the service station.

So I drove through it again, clearing the storm just before hitting the I-66 exist at Strasburg. We reached Front Royal before the storm, heading Northeast, struck again, pounding us with water, wind and lightning for the rest of the drive into Arlington.

One storm, three encounters. What is normally a four-and-a-half hour drive took nearly five-and-a-half hours. Rain managed to seep in several places on the normally watertight Jeep.

We got in, ordered a pizza, and settled down to watch “10-5,” an NBC mini-series about earthquakes sending California into the Pacific. The weather scroll on the bottom of the screen said we have driven through a tornado warning — three times.

After that, a movie about earthquakes seemed minor.