Tour 6 – Day Nine
I managed a good eight hours and woke to find the threat had been increased to enhanced for Colorado and Kansas region. I went over to McDonald’s for a breakfast biscuit and we had our orientation at ten. All the parameters for severe weather were looking very good.
We headed south towards Limon for lunch. We got held up by a train in Brush and had to divert.
Even after backtracking, we could see the train was still blocking the road and not moving.
We got to Limon which was in the middle ground for the expected storms. Bill suggested we take lunch to go as things were already initiating off the mountains.
Most of us ended up in Arbys with the slowest cashier in Colorado. Someone joked that between the train and the Arby’s visit, we might be delayed by thirty seconds and could miss a tornado as a result.
Hold that thought.
We brought our lunches back to the vans and we turned around to go back the way we came. We passed through Strasburg and turned north towards Prospect Valley.
By now, the storms were looking good and we could see a great system to our left. It looked like it had a tornado on the ground.
But when we got higher, we could see it better.
We while we wanted to stop, Bill said he wanted to go to the end of the road.
And by now, we should know that In Bill We Trust.
It was a slight incline up to the end of the road and behind the rise was the same cell with the beginnings of a tornado dropping out of the back of it.
We could not have timed it any better.
You want to see six people exit a van in an organized hurry. We piled down the embankment into a wheat field and I got my time lapse going when it was just about a third of the way down.
Then it touched the ground!
It got thin.
And from our perspective it was coming towards us and doing a dance.
It was magnificent.
It stayed on the ground for about nine minutes.
Then slowly receded into the cloud.
The time lapse shows the two primary clouds rotating in opposite directions.
This video shows the last few tendrils vanishing.
Well.
You want to hear a cheer go up. Everyone gave a thumbs up.
Some hugged.
Some smiled.
And then we kept watching the storm hoping it would drop another one.
But nothing appeared.
We headed south from here as a line of storms were moving to the southeast. We made a stop just west of Agate to watch a storm with great potential.
But after watching it for about fifteen minutes, we were met by a cold outflow wind which signaled the end of any decent potential for a tornado.
We continued south and targeted the storm to the north of that one but there were a couple of boundaries that was spreading out like a wake, and while tornadoes like boundaries, this was turning them all into a bit of a mess.
We drove through the outflow from one storm near Burlington that was picking up a lot of dust.
We made a quick stop to watch a dust devil.
We then drove east trying to get out from under the storm’s anvil but it seemed to be keeping good pace with us.
We finally made it out in front of it in western Kansas and stopped to watch it approach.
We got back into the vans before the wall of dust hit us and turned south. Around sunset, we pulled off to watch the lightning.
It started to rain and we drove into Syracuse to a Subway for dinner after what had been a seven hour chase day. While we were there, one local woman noted that they hadn’t seen rain like this in a long time. It was pouring with constant lightning.
Bill wanted to stay in Syracuse for the night but everything was sold out, so we had to go to Lamar where the pickings were slim. We were split between two hotels. The six of us on Tour 6 took a hotel that Bill had never stayed in before but it had a nice 4.6 rating on Google.
It was called the Buzzard’s Nest and it was right next to a large bar that was part of hotel.
That should have been our first clue.
Bill got us checked in and then took the mini-tour people to the other hotel. I tried to get into my room but the key wouldn’t work. Then one of the owners said something to the effect that the “kids were in there,” and gave me another key. I tried that room but found the beds weren’t made.
So, I got a third key and this one looked fine.
It didn’t take long to figure out that the 4.6 review score was propped up by the hotel or friends of the owners. It was by far the worst hotel I’d ever stayed in. The internet was great and the TV selection decent but that was where it ended. The entry was full of dust and dirt and the rug looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed in some time.
The dead flies on the window sill made it obvious that it likely hadn’t been dusted or cleaned properly in quite some time.
The sheets and towels were brown meaning I couldn’t tell if they were clean. The air conditioner had a fragrance plug on it, but unlike other rooms, mine didn’t stink of smoke.
Mulder and Scully wouldn’t have stayed there, and granted, this hotel was most certainly the rare exception to the rule on these tours.
I was so tired, I slept in my clothes
But it wasn’t near enough to dampen a freakin’ awesome day!
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