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I'm not one to believe in magic, the acts of an angry god or hippie neo pagans that can control the weather. This riding season has been full of surprises and some of them have been downright dangerous! Last night was no exception.
Last May I was camped out along the infamous Arkansas Pig Trail a.k.a. Highway 23. It's a gorgeous hilly and twisted road with a pretty decent USFS campground about midway through the twisties. It's in the bottom of a pretty steep canyon with plenty of mature tree cover so I wasn't to worried about severe weather. At that particular camp, a tornado was indicated on radar about four to five miles away, the wind blew from every direction at about 60mph for around five minutes then a good bit of rain. Got to rethinking my wisdom for staying in the tent and swore I'd at least get into the shower house next time!
Since it was wet and quite windy in that part of the country I watched the weather reports and a couple of days later I made a mad dash for New Mexico knowing I had a couple of days of decent weather to work with. Ended up at a State Park in the high desert just north of Tucumcari, NM. Nice enough place along the edge of a reservoir but no trees for shade and just some scrubby brush to break the wind. Sure enough, a desert monsoon blew through the day after I got there spawning a tornado about eight miles away. Had the sense to take cover in the bath house for that one but my tent got completely wrecked. Had I been inside I could have held the poles well enough to keep them from snapping. Two tornadoes ridden out in about eight days!
After the rain the desert bloomed seemingly overnight, unfortunately this woke up the fleas and I was dinner. Packed up and moved north into southern Colorado and found a nice spot along the front range. After making a ride through the high country and getting hit by golf ball sized hail I made it back to camp. A few hours later tornadoes where forming just overhead of camp and I watched them touching down about 20 miles to the east over the plains. THREE tornado events in two weeks!
After a couple of weeks of cold but uneventful weather I headed back east. Just outside of Kansas City I rode out a severe thunderstorm that was strong enough to blow the bike over. No tornado but close enough.
Since then things have been pretty calm with nothing more than a couple of cold (35°) nights to mention. That changed last night. After a gorgeous 75° day a line of strong storms formed over Oklahoma and moved into southwestern Missouri. Sure enough, a tornado touched down less than ten miles away. You could definitely hear it but all I saw was a lot of rain, not much wind at all. Dodged a bullet with this one!
It's been a heck of a year and at just under six months on the road I'm only a couple of weeks away from moving into a dry, warm place near Branson, MO to sit out the winter. Supposedly Branson only gets an average of eight inches of snow per year, I haven't looked at the tornado average, maybe I should!
Last May I was camped out along the infamous Arkansas Pig Trail a.k.a. Highway 23. It's a gorgeous hilly and twisted road with a pretty decent USFS campground about midway through the twisties. It's in the bottom of a pretty steep canyon with plenty of mature tree cover so I wasn't to worried about severe weather. At that particular camp, a tornado was indicated on radar about four to five miles away, the wind blew from every direction at about 60mph for around five minutes then a good bit of rain. Got to rethinking my wisdom for staying in the tent and swore I'd at least get into the shower house next time!
Since it was wet and quite windy in that part of the country I watched the weather reports and a couple of days later I made a mad dash for New Mexico knowing I had a couple of days of decent weather to work with. Ended up at a State Park in the high desert just north of Tucumcari, NM. Nice enough place along the edge of a reservoir but no trees for shade and just some scrubby brush to break the wind. Sure enough, a desert monsoon blew through the day after I got there spawning a tornado about eight miles away. Had the sense to take cover in the bath house for that one but my tent got completely wrecked. Had I been inside I could have held the poles well enough to keep them from snapping. Two tornadoes ridden out in about eight days!
After the rain the desert bloomed seemingly overnight, unfortunately this woke up the fleas and I was dinner. Packed up and moved north into southern Colorado and found a nice spot along the front range. After making a ride through the high country and getting hit by golf ball sized hail I made it back to camp. A few hours later tornadoes where forming just overhead of camp and I watched them touching down about 20 miles to the east over the plains. THREE tornado events in two weeks!
After a couple of weeks of cold but uneventful weather I headed back east. Just outside of Kansas City I rode out a severe thunderstorm that was strong enough to blow the bike over. No tornado but close enough.
Since then things have been pretty calm with nothing more than a couple of cold (35°) nights to mention. That changed last night. After a gorgeous 75° day a line of strong storms formed over Oklahoma and moved into southwestern Missouri. Sure enough, a tornado touched down less than ten miles away. You could definitely hear it but all I saw was a lot of rain, not much wind at all. Dodged a bullet with this one!
It's been a heck of a year and at just under six months on the road I'm only a couple of weeks away from moving into a dry, warm place near Branson, MO to sit out the winter. Supposedly Branson only gets an average of eight inches of snow per year, I haven't looked at the tornado average, maybe I should!
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