We're on the road at 07:00 with a target area of Mineral Wells which is west of Dallas, a 6 hour drive away. Breakfast is on the run from...McDonalds...which get's forced down. We head south on US83, have a pitstop at Wheeler then onto Shamrock for a wander around the historic U Drop Inn Cafe, the restored Art Deco gas station on the old Route 66.
The SPC has upgraded the tornado risk to 5%, presumably they were waiting for the location of the outflow boundary from yesterday's storms. We continue south on US83.
The long journey continues, south to Childress, east to Quanah then south to Seymour and a stop at the Chicken Express; nice fries but the chicken was mostly batter and the 32oz Diet Coke was just intimidating. We take a further pit stop at Breckenridge then east to Gordon and south on Highway 108. The topography changes and we are surrounded by pretty woodland.The SPC has upgraded its mesoscale discussion to a severe thunderstorm watch.
We head through Stephenson, stock up on some van snacks then a couple of stops to view a decent updraft including at Hico then head east with the outflow boundary clearly visible on radar.
We continue past Lake Whitney then stop at Hillsboro. The cells where we are don't look too promising and a severe warned storm has blown up to out north west, so change of plan and we're off north on Highway 171 to intercept.
We find a vantage point on the crest of a hill on US67 between Nemo and Cleburne and there in front of us is a the only severe warned storm in our area with a nicely defined wall cloud. After the mammoth drive today it felt like the storms gods were playing with us - finally a break. We stopped here for a while, the storm gently tightening up into an amazing structure, a boundary passed over us and the air became sticky, the storm going east and the boundary going west collided giving extra impetus. Finally it started raining so time to call it a day not before Reed Timmer in one of the Dominators had wizzed past.
We went to for dinner at Pastafina, an Italian restaurant in Cleburne. The pizza sizes were translated into actual sizes by the nice young waitress: Personal, small, medium and large. I optimistically go for the small, Rory despite my best advice goes for a medium, and of course when it turns up it is...ENORMOUS. He manages half of it, the rest for some point in the future.
When we leave the restaurant the skies are an amazing sight, almost like an impressionist painting and when we arrive at our hotel for the night, La Quinta at Cleburne, the sky is now under lit by the setting sun eventually checking out in an amazing shade of pink.
Total miles:
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