A bad night’s sleep was followed by a standard breakfast at
87 restaurant in Clayton which was helped down by Marcus’ schoolboy error of
ordering tea and getting iced tea instead. Never fails to amuse when this
happens which it does regularly with Plains newbies. Evan asking for hot tea
with milk is a lottery so I reluctantly stick to what passes for coffee.
Another sunny day with a marginal SPC forecast so we’re off
west to the extinct Capulin Volcano I
last visited in 2006 to do some sightseeing. The van is much more orderly today
with the Tetris game of packing the boot (trunk) now mastered and all the
extraneous junk now properly stowed.
Pretty much a waiting game today to see if anything bubbles
up later, I’ve given up refreshing the SPC forecasts as hope has been set to
one side.
A long coal train passes us by with 121 cars and 5 engines.
Yes I counted them, it narrowly beats “I Spy” to pass the time.
We get to the Capulin Volcano National Park, park up near
the summit and walk up and around the crater. The views are worth the slight
shortness of breath (8750 feet), hills in the Oklahoma Panhandle are easily
visible as was a gentle boundary indicated by some small clouds. We get back to
the Suburban and…say what? A 2% tornado warning has appeared right by us just
as it did in 2010. It’s right over Campo too. Bonus and I didn’t see that
coming. The mood lifts.
We trundle into Folsom with its abandoned and dilapidated
shops and houses and pay $1.50 to go
into the Folsom Museum (www.folsommuseum.org)
built in 1896 the same year as my house back home and filled with artefacts
from the Sante Fe trail, a piano dumped
from a wagon as it was too heavy and rescued by a rancher, a grizzly photo of
the hanging of train robber Black Jack who lost his head in the
process…literally and a sign advertising Swastika Coal replete with swastika emblems.
The company appeared active until 1940…We head back towards Clayton to pick up
provisions and gas up. We have a chase on our hands.
We head south on highway 402 where a storm has initiated
with rocketing convection, white boiling clouds ascending to the heavens producing a baby storm. Two other storms are up and
running too. We watch it for a while and it starts to fade so we return to
Clayton. While there the three storms start to regenerate so we head south
again and soon the northerly storm is severe warned and producing decent CG
lightning. We get out of the Suburban and are rewarded with some nice
structure: a clear rain foot, precipitation free base and wall cloud. Soon all
three storms are severe warned so we continue south to catch the most southerly
storm which is now dominant.
We head south west on US 52 and stop by a railway line for
photos with a huge hail core evident and now topping out at 49000 feet and
showing 3” hail. We stop again and then stop at Logan for a pit stop before
heading south on highway 469 towards the southern edge of the 2% tornado risk
box. We eventually get to the I40 and head east for the 90 mile trip towards
Amarillo. As we head down the interstate sporadic CGs light up the sky to our north. We are booked into the Super 8 and head to the Texas Roadhouse for salad...and a very nice rib eye steak.
A very
rewarding chase day considering the original forecast.
Total miles: 354
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