 |
|
One aspect of chasing that I hadn’t anticipated before hitting the road was the amount of down time one might experience between storms. Our last chase was Wednesday, May 14, when we nearly caught a tornado near Big Springs, Texas. Since then, however, the weather system that triggered that storm, as well as several others that day, cycled down. This means that the cold front dropped well into Mexico, wiping the atmosphere of much of its moisture, which you need to have tornadic storms. The next trough brining in Gulf moisture may not appear until Tuesday or Wednesday of this next week, and even then the computer models aren’t predicting tornadic potential until Thursday through Sunday. So what is a group of storm chasers to do when there are no storms? Drive–a lot–looking for the stray LP, or low precipitation storm, that might display lovely cloud formations and some small hail. And if that’s not possible? Then we become tourists, like we were yesterday in Roswell, New Mexico. That’s right, the storm chases set their sites on an alien crash site, which, interestingly, was later said to be merely the remnants of a weather balloon that had crashed just outside the air force base. Another interesting connection to storms: the supercells that produce tornadoes are affectionately called “mother ships” because of their size and rotation when hovering over the landscape. The running joke yesterday? “I went to Roswell and probed a mother ship.” Of course, the only thing we “probed” with our portable Doppler radar were a few LPs that dropped a few rain showers on Roswell. The other aspect of chasing that I hadn’t anticipated is the lack of time for writing. Since we’re in the vans for anywhere from 8 to 10 hours each day, even on “down time,” we’re left with very little time for ourselves. A usual day begins around 7:30 for me. I shower, go for a walk, grab some coffee and re-pack all of the stuff that I unpacked the night before. We meet at 9:00 to go over weather data or the plans for the drive and then leave the hotel around 10:30 or 11:00, heading out across hundreds of miles of open states–waiting. We may or may not stop for lunch, but we always seem to pull into the hotel no earlier than 7:00 (on chase days it’s usually around 11:00 pm), which means a late dinner and phone calls and e-mails to family and friends. As a writer hoping to chronicle the chase, I rely heavily on my notes and my iPod recorder to capture the specifics of each day–but the larger trends in my thinking are sadly neglected. I’m the kind of person who needs extended periods in front of a computer to make sense of the details. It’s a luxury I don’t have right now. My plan is to spend the few weeks after I return from the chase writing out my thoughts in long hand on the computer and then letting them mull for a while (maybe a few more weeks) while I enjoy the summer with my two boys, Dane and Kevin. I don’t think I’ll plan to travel anywhere by car for a good long while. PS today we’ll cross the border of the Oklahoma panhandle into Kansas, which for those of you who know me, is perhaps one of the more meaningful times of this trip. It’s been nearly three years since I called Kansas home, and I’m eager to return for a few days.
(featuring Rupee) Rihanna, Rupee uh (Kill it Rihanna, yo) You’ve got to dig this one. And the rest of them last. (come on girl, uh) So you better be warned. (Merci à Roxanne&Roy pour cettes paroles)
OK, Ron for some reason sent me more cash because I have been working on his website. He already paid me last week, but who is to look a gift horse in the mouth? On the way to Greyhound-Western Union, Shari was informing me how SHE was going to spend MY cash. We talked to Jim for a while and Saturday afternoon I get my terrarium. He’s the guy with the African Grey. That bird is hilarious. We heard it singing walking down the sidewalk. As cars backed out of the parking lot, he would do the back up beep the trucks make. It made a wolf call at a woman and almost pissed her boyfriend off, but he couldn’t find out who did it. We wondered over to Mayfest, which really is no big deal. They blocked off a closed road (Read that sentence again), Set up two bands and a ton of little stores. But whats a walk downtown without a picture of downtown? I think this is the only street that doesn’t have a roadblock up. Thats the BOK (Bank of America) Building in the background. They put up new lamp posts downtown and it is a lovely walk at night as normally no one is there. Its deader than Saturday morning TV. When the wind is blowing you can hear it whistle around the buildings, it gives it more of a ghost town effect. Shari and I decided to stop at Tracey park and eat the Mazzios Pizza we had got with Rons blood money. It’s fun to take Shari into a store. She asked for a Sicilian Pizza and was informed that it was a Pizza Hut Item and not a Mazzios Item. There blew my chances of a discount. I don’t know what tipped Storm off that I was pissed when I walked in the door, but, she did take up a defensive position under the couch. There was no way I was going to let this ruin my night. I let Shari do the clean up.
|
Categories
Site DirectoryFavorites
|
