Upslope flow cold junk

DAY 9 MAY 10, 2009

Today started off with a nice hot breakfast provided by the motel. Rita and I were enjoying our meal when we realized no one else was around... were we supposed to get up early? Hmmm... then Pam came down to join us. She said she never got a wake up call (she was smart... she had an alarm on her Blackberry). So we went to the front desk to see if we could wake up the rest of the crew. Once we got everyone rounded up, we took off at around 10:15 am to head north towards northeast New Mexico. It was going to be a marginal day, but Ron was hoping for an isolated storm over the mountains from upslope flow.

We stopped for a bite at Wendy's in Big Spring, Texas at around 1:30. It was pretty dull and cool out still. I was not really liking the overcast too much either. There was a trough positioned over the foothills. A later while later we took a quite stop in New Deal... Rita bought the biggest slushie I have ever seen! Only for like a buck too! Is this town living up to their name New Deal or what?

We continued our trek north towards Dumas. The skies were starting to clear. We must have seen about 10 or so dust devils in the fields on our way up hwy 287, including one that had three in a row at the same time! We also saw transverse rolls starting to organize, pointing the way towards the northwest. It looked like that if anything would develop it would be further west than initially thought. We stopped in Dumas at 6:30 to grab a bite (yes again, we eat a lot don't we?) and continued. It was about an hour later when Ron wanted to reassess the setup, so we pulled over on the shoulder so Ron could update himself on the RUC. It turned out that the warm front was actually pushing back, making the target twice the distance away from us! By now, the skies were getting all murky again. I just didn't like those clouds at all. We made the decision to give up and meet up with Jack and three new clients in Dumas. On our way back south, we saw a gust front that was multi-teired, so we stopped for some quick pictures.

At about 9 pm, we arrived in Dumas at an ice cream shop. The three new clients were David, Louise and Michelle from the United Kingdom. We had to head to Amarillo to get our rooms at a Super 8 for the night because the motels in Dumas were all booked. It was interesting approaching Amarillo at night... we could see the city lights from afar, that's how flat it is out here!

Jack invited Rita and I up to Ron and Sandra's room to celebrate Sandra's birthday. The ice cream cake was good even though it started to become really soupy. Ron and I decided to go over the models for Tuesday (I was keeping my eyes out for then because the models were hinting at severe storms in the panhandles). Of course, and not to my surprise, the GFS had changed from the last time I looked at it! This year the models have been rather difficult because of the unusual weather pattern, making forecasting even harder. The cap was very thick according to the latest run. Ron then decided to pick tomorrow's target... southwest Texas towards Odessa.