NM and Texas

What a whirlwind of a few days. Pun intended. Upon leaving Santa Rosa, we drove through the sleepy little alien town of Roswell, the stinky home of a LARGE oil refinery Artesia, and finally arrived in Carlsbad, NM. We set up in Carlsbad waiting for storms to fire and became the chased rather than the chasers. Our convoy parked in the Walmart parking lot was swarmed by fans of the show, other chasers and chase teams, and curious onlookers. I felt like I was on display at a circus. Tons of people coming up to you asking to take pictures with you and the equipment, asking you questions, wanting to tell you their bad weather stories. Now this has happened pretty much everywhere we've stopped but this particular few hours was a madhouse. I had the manager from the Chili's next door trying to get my number under the guise of wanting a picture of me and the TIV, two little girls asking me to explain complex weather instruments, countless numbers of scared residents asking when the "tornaders" (what they call them here in the Southwest) were going to come through, and other chase groups like Cloud 9, Ultimate Chase, COD, and more watching over my shoulder while I checked my pods with the datalogger. And yet again...no tornadoes. Another bum chase. There actually was one a long way west of us but it wouldn't have been deployable anyway.

As we were checking into the hotel in Carlsbad, a few good hail storms were moving our way with tons of beautiful CG (cloud to ground lightining). A bunch of us jumped in Scout 2 armed with tripods and cameras and took off south of town. It was beautiful. The sky was green and the clouds were black. Even if it wasn't tornadic, I still felt totally entranced by how amazing this scene appeared. The sky out here in limitless. It doesn't end. It just sort of melts into the horizon so as you can't really tell where the land ends and the sky begins. We stood on this dirt road in the desert until the gust front reached us, then took off south again on the main road. There were actually two cells and we were under strict instruction not to get the instruments on the truck damaged on a "non mission". So I was on radar duty and when it looked like we had a clear shot between the two cells, our driver Rutger u-turned and we raced North back to Carlsbad making it back without a scratch. Josh and Karen were pretty impressed by our crafty chasing...errr fleeing? That night I got to hang out with Ronan, Sean Casey, and Brandon Ivey (all former and current TIV crew). They are some great guys with lots of amazing stories.

So this brings me up to yesterday. Texas! The fifth new state on this trip for me. There was a lsight risk outlined along the Texas-Mexico border right near the Big Bend and so we took off. We drove through Fort Stockton, TX where I was informed by a local that all I had to do to find a "tornader" was drive in the direction of the black sky. Thanks dude. We then drove to within 40miles of the border to the 430 person town of Marathon, TX. This was a funky little town. It was this beautiful resort hotel and NOTHING else. Weird. But yet again, it was too cold near the surface to get the right dynamics for tornadoes so we called it an early day and took off North to Lamesa, TX. And trust me, it's no coincidence that Lamesa looks like lamest. It has about 3 restaurants, two gross hotels, and a McDonald's. Party!!!!!!!

On the road in New Mexico.