UK Storm Chasing - Tornado Alley (20-5-02)

Day 7 (20-5-2002) Click on any of the the Photos to Enlarge
As the only real chances of storms for today where going to be in the area we are now, we decide to stay in the motel at Limon for another night.
It gives us a chance to work out where the storms are coming from and we have the phone line for the computer.
Every room we have stayed in so far has cable television which has got the weather channel on. Although the weather channel isn't perfect, it gives you some idea of whats happening.
We noticed two cells coming up on radar towards our area, one is heading north east the other north, looking at there trajectory they look like they may even join.
With the roads about here, we have problems getting close to it, even on back roads you can go for 30-40 miles without seeing another turning. In an attempt to get behind the storm we headed south down the SR-71 (south of Rocky Ford Colorado) so we then can turn left onto the SR-350. We get to the T junction only to find the road is closed, we turn around race north back up the road and turn right onto a little back road. By this time the storm is getting ahead of us and we are getting anxious. We get to La Junta and are making ground on the storm, as we come up to to town dust and tumble weed is blown across the road. Turning right onto the SR-50 (east) and 15 miles on we are along side of the storm, we pull into a rest area jump out and start filming, I measure the winds getting up to 35 mph (not massive but it's looking hopeful).
Mamma cloud starts to develop on the front of the storm, we we are all hopeful, the storm then turns right and starts to go away from us, back in the car and off down the road to Las Animas, at this point we fill up with fuel, in the time we where in the garage the storm dies, the hail shaft we had been following dies, and it's looking bad, we follow the storm for a few more miles till we get to Lamar, we come across a service area where we find a internet surfing machine (you put a dollar in and get 4 minutes), after 4 dollars we still haven't got the radar map (maybe weather matrix is busy), so we give up before all loan is needed. It was so tempting to plug the laptop into the phone socket this machine was plugged into as well had spent 4 dollars and had got nothing for our money! Passing by the restaurant we notice phones on the table, we pop in and had a drink and ask if we can plug the laptop into the line on the table "no problem" they say, we then fetch the radar map, which on my laptop took under a minute to load. From my experience I will never be using one of those machines again, I would rather give the money to something worth while!
As we had speculated the storm had died, and as we where now 120 miles away from our motel and luggage, we headed back to plan for tomorrow. Do I call this a bust day, I don't think so we observed a storm develop, hail and mamma cloud, thats more than you can normally find in the UK.
Map of route