Today was the most promising day of the year according to the forecast. I tried not to get my expectations up too much but it was of course difficult. Especially, when the day begins with the first storm coming in over us when we are driving already at 11:30 a.m. A lightning bangs down about 100 meters next to us and we can not separate the flash from the bang, it was just that close.
Then we end up waiting again as usual. After a while we begin to follow a storm that does not seem directly exciting though. Having positioned ourselves nearby a couple of oil tanks alongside us, we see the storm come in and it is after all quite powerful, at least it has very powerful winds.
We continue on and end up in the rain again, this time without the hail. Basically we drive around in the rain for over an hour and it’s pretty boring. Finally we stop at a gas station – and hear about the most interesting thing of the whole day. A couple of storm chasers who been at some distance from us when we were positioned by the oil tanks have seen a tornado during a very short time – a matter of seconds – touch down on the other side of the oil tanks while we were standing there!
There was never any real danger, I guess, but a bit sad that we were placed so that we did not see it.
An all in all pretty boring and a bit of a frustrating day. We had high expectations and also raised the bar a bit – all storms must, at least in some respect, be better than the last! What can be said about today’s storm was at least that was the windiest (probably around 50 mph, where we stood) and the greenest (plenty of hail in the clouds).
Well, I just hope some of the last days will have something exciting to come up with. I am starting to look forward to go home now – I especially look forward to normal food. Today I was incredibly hungry at 7 p.m. when we stopped at the gas station. The most healthy I could choose was…peanuts.
Update at 9.50 p.m. – The last we saw of this storm was after dinner when it suddenly showed some cool features: A stunning display of lightning fireworks. The lightning were mostly hidden behind a large cloud and each flash lit up the clouds as if it was a bomb, and there were about 3 flashes per second. It was very pretty!
