the road goes on forever...

We chased a storm around Marathon, TX yesterday. There was no hope of tornadoes due to lack of rotation, but it was still a severe thunderstorm in terms of hail and heavy wind. We punched the core of the storm, parked the van under a picnic table roof on the side of the road (harder than it sounds) and watched the hail come down.  We probably saw a few gulf ball sized stones, and when the storm passed we drove down the street and it looked like it had snowed. The road was covered with about 2 inches of hail for about a mile. I'll try to put up a picture later.

Spent the night in Alpine, TX. Woke up and ran 8 miles around town and through the Sul Ross State University campus.  Probably headed to Colorado (and maybe Utah) in the next day or so.

Marginal risk again today, probably some more of what we had yesterday. We did get to see some cool storm structure and some hail and wind, so it's better than nothing.

We very illegally hiked and waded through the Rio Grande yesterday so that I could step foot in Mexico for the first time. It was actually somewhat tretcherous, and I just kept thinking about how mad I would be if I broke my ankle while doing it. But we made it, and I have officially been to Mexico.  No storms.

Ran around the parking lot of our hotel in Midland, Texas this morning. Tuesday is interval day so I found a stretch of industrial road next to the hotel that was about 450 meters long or so. Did 3 x up and back and 3 x one way. The times don't matter at all, but they were 3:49. 3:37, 3:30, 1:39, 1:32, 1:28.  Not bad (I guess?), but I was dead after the last one. Which is a good thing.

Should get an okay chase day in today. Keep your fingers crossed.

Miss you, pig. 

If interested, you can follow our storm chase on my fellow-chaser's blog:

thetae.blogspot.com 

We got good sunset pictures of a shelf cloud today, so when he updates there should be some pretty pics. 

interstate tempo run in OKC... ugh

Wichita, Kansas