While it was nominally an early night a bout of nausea had
me sitting up in bed until 01:30 followed by a fitful night’s sleep. Awoke to cold
grey soup and a slight risk in the Texas Panhandle.
We had a decent enough breakfast at the Calico County Restaurant
in Amarillo then went to visit the Jack Sizemore RV Museum just down the road.
The museum was free to enter and was part of an RV (Recreational Vehicle – i.e.
massive camper vans) sales company. The museum was actually pretty cool with
motorbikes, cars, RVs and memorabilia going back to the Second World War. The
exhibits included barn finds and many things in original and still good
condition plus a number of restorations such as Harley Davidsons which were
superbly well done, probably better than when they came out of the factory.
We leave the museum and the SPC has issued an upgraded enhanced
risk for the Texas Panhandle including a 5% tornado risk. We head south towards
Lubbock on the I27.
Our second museum of the day was the Silent Wings museum
dedicated to WW2 glider borne operations. It was pretty good but the weather
curtailed our $8 visit to 30 minutes as very heavy rain was now falling and there
was a storm with a rotating wall cloud and 2 ½ inch hail to our south.
We dashed south then exited south east on US70 to observe the
storm and took some photos. Torrential rain with 3/4” hail was now falling making
characteristic pings as it hit the SUV. Flash floods were everywhere with a semi-truck
off the road in a ditch and spray flying all over.
Lunch today was in Applebee’s in Lubbock which was
surrounded by some intense flash flooding; being flat for hundreds of miles the
water has nowhere to drain, there are no storm drains, the water collects in
special ditches at the side of the road and overwhelms any low lying point one
of which was beside our restaurant and was now a fairly reasonable river rather
than a road. A couple of comical moments ensued: the first when a man tried to
cross the road/river as he couldn’t be bothered to walk round it. There was
even better comedy as a car had been driven into the deepest part of the
torrent and was now stuck and probably with a badly damaged engine. An SUV appeared
and tried to pull the car out of the water, he took a run at it and snapped the
tow line. Eventually the car is retrieved but it is not driving anywhere anytime
soon. It’s memorial weekend coming up and a garden of remembrance is full of
flowers.
We set off south to where tornado probabilities will be at
the highest in a few hours in the warm sector and end up at Stripes truck stop on
the US87 at Tahoka. Its 87f and it’s time to wait and the risk appears to be
diminishing. We give up and head east on US380 then north on country farm roads
to look at a line of messy and increasingly diminishing storms to our north and
give up on them too so it’s back to our hotel in Childress. We have to drive
carefully and slowly as these farm roads are flooded and passable with extreme
care. There are blue flashing lights ahead…fortunately a truck has shed its
load of fertiliser and the road isn’t closed. We head east…on US82, the road in
very tricky with significant flooding and then north at Guthrie on US83 to our
hotel, the Days in at Childress.
The journey back is through rain and flooded roads, we pick up some Shiner Bock at a truck stop and watch a fab lightning displayfrom the portico of the hotel.
Tomorrow is another enhanced risk.
Total Miles: 389
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