2012--Day 5

Day 5

After spending a night in the tiniest hotel room yet (the bathroom had a pocket door) with the wind screaming through the window (thank you, Gus, for fixing it), we decided that today is not an ideal chase day.  While the SPC has our current area in a slight risk (from the northern Panhandle to the Front Range), the WRF model has an interesting but disorganized cell near us, but later in the day (it’s quasi-stationary and backbuilds!).  The risk of flooding is too great, and the other thing that develops is a quasi-linear MCS, so today is a no go.  The day 2 outlook has southeastern Kansas and part of northeastern Oklahoma under a slight risk, but the parameters look interesting enough to commit to this area.  As such, we are not planning to actively chase late storms and then drive the 6 hours to Wichita, so we’re going to see the Cadillac Graveyard in about five minutes, then eat lunch and head east toward OKC and decide whether to continue north toward Wichita or northeast to Tulsa.  It’s already too hot (and kinda humid—dew point of 50) for my liking.

 

The Cadillac Graveyard was everything you imagine it is—and not much else.  10 Cadillacs in a row buried nose first into the ground.  They were so heavily spray-painted it reminded me of the Berlin Wall.  I tried to capture some of the more imaginative artwork, but you have to remember that this is a barren field in Amarillo and not the Louvre.  They were certainly more colorful than Carhenge (see Day one of last year’s trip), but at least Carhenge had a theme. 

Nevertheless, it was worth the trip (and hopefully the sunburn).  There were some like-minded individuals who decided to take in the local color while the weather was quiet.  Also like us, they were quite a ways from home.

Before we started east we stopped for a traveling lunch at the corner of Heart Attack Boulevard and Cholesterol Avenue (a cluster of BK, Wendys, McDs and Taco Bell).  Ever the iconoclast, I made a solo trip to see the King.  The men’s room had a flickering light that made it feel like I was peeing in front of a strobe lamp.  I’m just glad I didn’t have a seizure.  After collecting my food I went to wait in the ‘shade’ while the rest of the crew returned from their respective choices, all the while hoping not to get pooped on by the native avian species--it was readily apparent that the area I was standing in and its surroundings were plenty popular in that regard.  In fact, I think the van got hit while I was standing there just a few feet from me.  I’d already been nailed once this year, so I guess they took pity on me.  

There’s not a whole lot to see in Texas Panhandle, but there were a couple of interesting sights.  It always amazes (and amuses) me to see a broken down shack with a satellite dish.  I imagine the inside of the house mirrors the outside, and the home provides what I would think to be only theoretical shelter from the elements (both natural and criminal), but they have a 70” TV to watch Korean soap operas.  Priorities, I guess.

The kids spotted the Tornado Intercept Vehicle (from the Discovery Channel) heading west on I40, between Elk City and Clinton.  Maybe they were heading for the Panhandles--best of luck.

As it turned out, we decided to go to Tulsa, which should allow us better options to intercept anything that develops on Sunday.  As an afterthought, there are storms lighting up the Front Range (1-inch hail, some damaging straight-line winds, no tornadoes).  There are also one or two interesting storms firing southwest of Amarillo as of 5:30 pm CDT (no reports of severe though), but as I said earlier we thought it would be late in the day.  Chasing them might have been fruitful, but it would have meant a lot of waiting around (and Murphy’s law would have seen to it that they wouldn’t occur if we were there), followed by a long drive east to be ready for Sunday’s potential fun and games.  Very quiet for a while in the van—not sure how anyone could sleep through eastern Oklahoma (snicker).  They all missed the construction equipment graveyard near Stroud—talk about missed opportunities.

The day ‘ended’ around 6:45 pm CDT in Tulsa (our first repeat state), with a total of 411 miles driven, bringing the grand total to 2441 miles since we started last Tuesday, and we haven’t yet been north of Denver.  If we keep up this pace, we’ll pass 6800 miles by the end—holy mother of God, let’s hope not.