Last night was a complete pain. Blog paranoia became overwhelming and the bloody thing needed seriously bringing up to date. Photos took an eternity to upload over Wi-Fi; deciding not to bring a LAN cable has proved time expensive as a LAN port was winking and laughing at me all last night.The Wi-Fi was poor in an otherwise decent hotel.
Last night the SPC issued an enhanced risk which by this
morning had been downgraded to slight. With the likely target not far west of
here we have a sightseeing tour of Mineral Wells starting at the currently
derelict but fantastic (Rich!) Baker Hotel which was built in the 1920’s as a
hotel for visitors to the spa; Mineral Wells – the clue’s in the name.
After climbing through (more like round to be fair) a fence
a SWAT team turn up. I think we might get told off. Fortunately the erm.. .security
guards are friendly and tell us about some of the history of thr hotel. Bits of
it were open for various things including a doctors but it’s been empty for a
while. They were hopeful that a $55m project would save the building – I do to,
it would be a crying shame to let it crumble away. I can empathise being from a
town that has knocked down most of its Victorian heritage thanks to the
negligence and arrogance of those in power over the years. That’s not progress.
The hotel is boarded up and clearly in a state inside. Many of the windows on
the upper floors are open and some smashed. The pool is full of rain water. We
take lots of photos.
We had a look round an “antique” shop selling all sorts of
memorabilia – you’d call it a junk shop in the UK which is not meant to be not
endearing (terrible English Adam) in
a building that was from the 1890’s; it was older than all the stock. I pass on
the WWII German helmet no doubt brought back from Europe by a veteran as a
souvenier. The friendly proprietors let me take some photos inside. We also
drop into another shop. No idea what you’d call it, make your own mind up from
the photos. I took a pile of photos including Rich with his new band. Taking
photos is requiring some care as my D800 has uncharacteristically been prone to
underexposure since day 1. Not sure why; I’ve been bracketing a bit and
checking the histogram more than usual. ALWAYS
shoot RAW as you can correct a whole heap of issues on the computer without
much, if any penalty.
We head off to a park to eat our freshly acquired Walmart
lunch…salad…I have the photos…Not at $7 entrance fee each we won’t. Peter vents his ire by leaving some “constructive
feedback” on Trip Adviser. We head off to another free park and lay out the
picnic. It is that point that the EF6 (reader alert: there is no such thing)
guarantee comes to the fore. Sitting under a tree is a bad idea during
lightning storms as they have a tendency to explode which has the potential to
ruin your day. The same is true when sitting under a tree where a pterodactyl
with the dynoshits is nesting. Well you can guess what happened next. In many
“cultures” this is a sign of good luck…EF6? EF7+ more like (yes I know blah
blah). A Frisbee appears and we help the moisture numbers with some freestyling.
It is 93f which is warm vs 52 back
home. I’ll take the former.
We head west on US180. If we get anything today (supercells
are possible) it will be somewhere
west later on.
We stop at Breckenridge for fuel and I get the ritual
Hershey Bar and a cold vanilla coffee drink. The key to this kind of diet is
not to look at the ingredients particularly the bit about calories. Gas is 30 odd
cents a gallon cheaper than down the road which is a bit wierd. I got a text
from the wife who had “gone out for an onion”; hopefully the regulars at Dr
Phil’s Real Ale House like the blog, apparently my giant stones were all the
talk at cricket…I’m good and phone home at roaming rates as I’m Wi-Fi bereft.
We continue west on US180 and across Hubbard Creek Dam. A
severe warned tower has appeared in the distance and is already at 37,000 feet.
Nice. We drive through the sad, semi
abandoned town of Lueders and our storm has a TVS marker for a while showing
some rotation. The anvil is clearly visible with the welcoming sight of a bit
of mammatus. A quick stop at Stanford and the big button on the Esplanade that says
“Chase Mode” is pressed. The storm has hail to 2”, tops out at 45,000 feet and
we can see lighting. There’s clear separation of the updraft and downdraft;
dust is being sucked into the precipitation free base and bits of scud are
dancing around. We’ve even got a bit of a lowering. 3 and quarter inch hail is now
showing. The TVS marker is just about
back showing 33 kts. Not much in the way of low level winds at the moment so
not much shear, but things could go supercellular later this afternoon/evening.
Time check: 14:50 so plenty of the day is left.
Our storm has a bit of organisation to it and we can feel
the inflow on our backs. It has a lovely shelf cloud on it and soon we’re all
employing the iPhone panorama camera mode. We keep retreating to stay ahead.
This thing is a right mover and tracking south east by east; we’ve got a road
that almost perfectly parallels it and can keep this “photo and go”
routine up for a while. There’ll shortly
be some wind to help with shear so we crack on to get in a better position much
further down the road.
Then sods law strikes; the National Weather Service mobile
phone warning goes off on Valerie’s phone – our storm is apparently now tornado
warned. Almost in the next breath a chaser right in the heart of the storm
reports a tornado, however this was the only chaser to call it in, nobody else
appears to have seen it.
We stop in a small town by the football stadium (Bulldogs?)
and catch some nice mammatus and some lightning. We move on and it’s apparent
that our cell is on collision course with two others and sure enough they merge
and we lose the tornado warning. We head south and by this time the light is
fading.
We have a Sonic Burger at Early. You need a pHd in
burgerology to order it and when it does turn up the cheque is mixed up. I’m
now with the Rat on this – it’s not great. We’re booked back in to the Days Inn
at Mineral Wells and have a couple of storms to pique our interest on the way
there, hopefully with some good lightning. A big CG flashes in front of us as
we track east on US 377.
We turn onto the I20 and Rich is on the left of the van
which will get the best view. I wait for the first “fantastic”. There are
zillions of flashes, I’m happy that Rich has a good view. You can’t appreciate
how often (every couple of seconds) and how relentless (hours) the lightning
is. It’s stunning. I crack on with this
blog and start sorting photos so I’m not arsing about when we get to the hotel.
We’ll have had 8 hours of actual chasing from 3 p.m. never mind the trip to
target. We won’t be in until well after
12.
Four straight days of top storm chasing, including tornado
warned cells on three days including today. They’re rubbish these 2% days
aren’t they? ;o)
Total Miles: 432 
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