Tour 6 – Day Eight
We had a 9:30 start to the day since they expected a storm to initiate around Denver. At the morning briefing, they showed a pic of the tornado that was inside the rain-wrapped system the day before but not visible from our perspective.
After our briefing, we headed west and were going to get the spare tire replaced but the storms had other plans. We ended up hanging around just to southeast of Denver to watch for the storms.
I introduced some people on Mini Tour B to tumbleweeds.
They had fun setting them free.
We then made a short stop at an outdoor museum in Strasburg.
It had a caboose.
And this time we could go inside.
The indoor section of the museum had sections set up to show what the barber shops, homes and stores were like in the 19th century.
We made one pit stop that had the most interesting milkshake machine. You picked out your flavour in a freezer next to the machine, put the cup on the holder and it went up inside the machine and got mixed.
Nice on a hot afternoon.
We headed to the southeast and pulled off the road to say hello to the cows while we waited for the storms to go up.
Then someone found a snake on the road, and once again, Chris was the first to say hello to the little guy.
This one didn’t mind being held like the last one we met.
Bill called us together for an update and we released the snake into the grass so it wouldn’t get run over.
We gathered around and he said that we’d forgo the weak storms showing to the southeast and head for storms that were going up to the north.
We could see the structure from an hour away.
We made one stop where we could get a decent view of the whole cell.
We made another stop by a railway track and got a view of a cell that looked like a armadillo or something.
Then we found a sweet spot near Orchard, Colorado where we had an unobstructed view of two cells side by side. One had lightning. One didn’t.
We spent at least twenty minutes there and I was able to get a decent time lapse of one of the cells.
Then it started to rain.
We headed northeast and the rain got quite heavy. We got as far as Fort Morgan just after sunset and turned around to look for a good lightning show to watch. We had to drive about twenty minutes to get in between two systems.
We found a spot and had lightning to the north and south of us, so I pointed one camera north.
And one south.
We got about twenty minutes there before the rain started up again, and with hail headed our way, they opted to hide under a bridge rather than to outrun it.
The hail was about the size of a small grape.
It lasted about five minutes and then we headed to Fort Morgan for the night at the Super 8.
There was a sugar beet plant right next to the hotel with a very strong smell of sulphur. You couldn’t smell it in the hotel.
Apparently it only went into production a year ago.
The residents must be thrilled.
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