Storm Chasers

Most of you who know me know that I went through a rather intense phase in my life where I knew I was destined to chase storms for a living.

Although that dream didn't quite play out exactly how I imagined it when I was a young teenager, I do somewhat get to live out that dream by merely living in West Texas.


The weather can get buck wild out here.


By 5 pm last night, storms were blowing up all over the South Plains. I wasn't too excited about this at first, because Byron was flying back from a quick trip to San Angelo on a little twin engine plane - right through all of of Mother Nature's fury. But, he landed safe and sound after a rather hairy flight, so we headed out in his truck to see if we could capture some of this good stuff on film...or a digital memory card for that matter.


The interesting thing about storms on the South Plains is when they blow in as quickly as they often do, they stir up an amazing amount of dust from the plowed up cotton fields in the area. The blanket of dust at the head of the storm "browned out" the north side of Lubbock.


We drove out of town to get a better look at the storm. That meant taking the occasional dirt road to get a good angle on the thing.


I stepped outside to get this shot and the wind was so strong, Byron had to pull my left arm in as I tried to shut the door with my right. I got sandblasted in the process.

When it rains during a dust storm, it basically rains mud.


We found ourselves near Idalou, just northeast of Lubbock, and in the storm's hail shaft. You can hear it hitting the truck in this video:



Thanks to Byron's handy navigation, we drove south out of Idalou on dirt roads to avoid the hail. We finally got out of the storm, and just far away to get a good look at it. We were able to park and watch quite a lightning show - or in my nerdy storm chasing lingo, some sweet "C to C" lightning (cloud to cloud). Watch it here:





The cloud was hot enough I was able to capture lightning on camera with a point and shoot.


It was a beautiful storm. A little rain, a little hail, a lot of wind, but no tornadoes.