7 June 2023
Santa Rosa, NM to Fort Stockton, TX
Well, there wasn’t even a waffle machine. We were crushed.
I settled for a yogurt.
We were out early at 9:30 for a parking lot briefing as there was expected severe weather in west Texas near the Mexican border, about a six hour drive away. We made a quick stop at MacDonald’s and headed directly south. We made a couple of quick stops along the way and were in position south of Fort Stockton by late afternoon.
There was a short string of storms just west of Fort Stockton. They were just sitting there, barely moving.
We passed through Fort Stockton and went through the hail core of the middle storm.
On the other side, they saw signs that the cell had characteristics of a supercell. It produced a good amount of lightning with some interesting structure.
This scud could be mistaken for a tornado.
The rain chased us south to Marathon and we turned east into terrain I remember from 2018.
We made one stop near a railroad line.
Then we moved up the road a short distance. I went through some brush to get to the railroad where the lightning was exceptional.
If we had stayed ten more minutes, I would have been interrupted by a train.
As I left the area, the flipped out screen on the back of my camera got ripped off at the hinge by the bushes. Luckily, it didn’t disconnect and fit back in the slot with the screen faced out.
We made a short stop in Sanderson just before sunset and then drove about ten miles east to find a spot above the canyon to watch the storm at sunset.
The lightning was everywhere.
It produced a lot of tall bolts.
And went on for about an hour. Even as we finished up, a stray bolt would make one not want to take down their tripod.
From here, we headed back to Sanderson for some gas station food and drove back through a trailing storm to get to the Day’s Inn in Fort Stockton.
With a Walmart Supercentre next door!
Bill Reid’s entry for 7 June.
Go to Day Four
Go to Table of Contents
