Day 7 – Wall Clouds, Lightning Storms, and Abandoned Hotels

Our last (sniff sniff) day of storm chasing was significantly more relaxed than Thursday’s, but we still managed to see some well-defined mammatus and asperatus clouds, a giant wall cloud, some very strong straight-line winds, and the most amazing lightning storm I’ve ever seen in my life. Because Friday’s storms were much further south than Thursday’s, much of the day was spent driving, and we gained an appreciation for the beauty of the Central Texas landscape and drove through many small, quirky, and historic towns.

We left Clinton, Oklahoma around 11:30 and started our journey down to North/Central Texas. Soon after we entered Texas, we ran across some beautiful mammatus and asperitus clouds from storms to our south.

We initially set our sights on a frontal boundary near Abilene (prettiest town I’ve ever seen!), Texas, but we were sidetracked by a couple of severe thunderstorms on our way down there. The first severe thunderstorm warning popped up for a cell slightly to our east near Windthorst. We decided to mosey over to it and see what Mother Nature was cookin’ up for us, getting there around 2:25 pm. It quickly became apparent that this cell wasn’t going to produce a tornado, so we resumed our southward trek towards Abilene. These storms were still well over 100 miles away from us though, so we were on the lookout for any cells further north.

Around 3, we stopped for fried chicken in Mineral Wells, Texas. Mineral Wells stood out amongst the other towns we previously passed through because of a the Baker Hotel, HUGE abandoned hotel that was plopped right in the middle of the city. Baker Hotel opened to the public in 1929, flourished through the 30s and WWII, and declined through the 50s, closing its doors for good in 1972. The founder, Earl Baker, died of a heart attack in the “cavernous” (Wikipedia’s words) Baker Suite in 1967, so there is good reason to believe this hotel is haunted!

There has been a lot of talk about restoring the hotel to its former glory, but no formal restoration effort has taken place yet. Unfortunately, I worry that even if all the funds were procured to restore the hotel, it would be tough to market simply because Mineral Wells is not close to any major tourist attractions and didn’t appear to be faring too well economically. Then again, in an age where people spend money on Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga, a restored historic, luxury hotel out in the middle of nowhere doesn’t seem like that tough of a sell.

Another thing: there are a TON of wind farms in Texas, Even though Texas is famous for its oilfields, they produce more wind power than any other state, and do so by a substantial margin. I’ve always found the juxtaposition of wind farms, and dark clouds to be most photogenic, but as the sign below shows, not everybody is happy with the “windfall” from these wind farms. While its true that renewable energy brings in a TON of new jobs, it also threatens the livelihoods of those in the fossil fuel industry, and plenty of people simply don’t like the encroachment of “Big Wind” into their town. I’m sure wind energy is a contentious topic in this part of the country.

We finished our lunch around 4 pm and decided to continue our trek south, where strong storms were still developing along a cold front. We still had several hours to go until we reached those storms and were doubting whether we could make it before sunset.

But around 6:15, a line of supercells developed just slightly to our south, much closer to us than our original target. Though these storms were smaller than the complex south of Abilene, they looked good on radar and showed some weak rotation, so we decided to check them out.

At first, it looked like we made a great decision, as these storms quickly developed severe thunderstorm warnings and rotation slightly intensified. As we expected, the storms further north began to die our as storms further south cut off their inflow of warm, moist air, but the southernmost of these storms continued to intensify. We weaseled through the winding rural roads near Cranfills Gap for nearly an hour before we came over a hill and got a stunning view of a large wall cloud hovering beneath the base of our supercell.

From that same hill, we had a stunning view of a sunset 180 degrees away from our wall cloud. Nobody appreciates wall clouds and sunsets more than I do, but I wish Mother Nature would have the decency to stagger them throughout our day instead of bombarding us with them all at once!

The circulation on this storm rapidly weakened after the sun set and it headed northward into a less favorable environment. Meanwhile, the easternmost cell in the group of storms we initially set our sights on south of Abilene had a confirmed tornado and very strong rotation on doppler radar. We were kicking ourselves in the foot for getting sidetracked throughout the day and not sticking with our original plan, but we were happy we had seen so much cool stuff and a dramatic giant wall cloud. Since it was our last night, we decided to head east towards Goldthwaite, Texas to see what was going on with this storm.

The Lightning

This storm lost its tornado warning just minutes after we started heading east, but it still showed very strong rotation on radar. But more memorably, there was an unbelievable amount of lightning from this storm – more than any other single storm I had ever seen in my life. We stopped a little east of of Goldthwaite and “waited” for the storm to come to us. There were many flashes per second and the sky was nearly constantly illuminated. I’ve always found it amazing that a storm could discharge that much static electricity, because it means it is generating an electrical charge at a very fast pace.

After peeling off onto a dirt road and gawking at this storm for nearly an hour, we chased another rotating storm (no tornado warning) to our south and ran into some drizzle and very strong straight-line winds near Lampasas around 11 pm. After that, we decided to call it a night and head back east to Killeen in preparation for my flight from Dallas Saturday afternoon.

All-in-all, I had an awesome time on this trip. It’s worth mentioning that Joey and I had never met each other in the flesh – I believe I first heard of him when I was in high school after he made a Youtube comment on one of my videos of the Hanukkah Eve Storm. We became friends on Facebook, and back in March, I posted a Facebook status asking if anybody was interested in storm chasing. Joey replied, and that was that! It can be scary to spend a week with somebody you’ve never met before, but Joey and I had a great time. He did ALL the driving for this trip and most of the planning/scheduling, giving me more time to write these blogs. Be sure to like his Tornado Chasers Live Facebook page and website. Joey’s also a very talented game developer/computer programmer, so check out Glider Island, a virtual-reality game that he single-handedly created and recently posted on Steam!

Thanks for following us throughout our journey – we hope to be back next year!