My plan for today was to head towards Lamar, CO and then review the data again as I hadn't made as much time to forecast as I wanted to / should have.  I was confident that there would be storms coming off the mountains and I was in the right area, so from Lamar I drove further west to La Junta. 

 

After not too long some cells had fired, held together and travelled towards my location.  There were three storms in a cluster and I positioned myself by the middle one (safe ground I figured!).  I could see the base of the one to the SW but the one to the NE was obscured by rain, inexperience or whatever it was made me unsure whether or not I should go to the SW cell, I was thinking about the whole 'tail end Charlie' thing and the fact that from where I was stopped, it looked a lot better than what was right in front of me, but felt that I should stick with the middle cell.  I did change my mind more than once and started to drive towards the SW but then turned back and headed to my original location. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I sat and watched the middle storm slowly organise itself as it edged towards me.  It produced a small funnel at one point but that didn't develop into anything.  I was very wary of the hail in this cell as the markers on GRL3 were showing larger than 3" and even though I know it melts before it reaches the ground, I have heard many stories about the hail in Colorado!  I wanted to reposition myself on the other side of La Junta and decided to refuel the car first so I drove into town and tried to find a gas station.  There was only one open and it had a few cars queuing for it so when it was my turn at the pump I went inside, prepaid some gas and then went to the bathroom.  I hadn't been in there long when I started to hear banging coming from above me and thought there must be some people upstairs, but then realised that there was no upstairs.  My next thought was that it must be birds on the roof, some big birds, and then the penny dropped.  I wasn't back home in England now, that wasn't birds, it was HAIL!  I looked up and saw a skylight and sure enough could see the hail, some of them big ones too!  I had totally taken my eye off the ball (and the radar) and had obviously taken longer than I'd planned and the storm was now right with me!  I dashed outside and the store clerk was looking very concerned out the window - I understood why - her car was not under the canopy....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once I'd got away from the hail and on the other side of the storm, the road options were good and the storm was taking a pretty straightforward NE route so I went east on Highway 50 and then north 287.  On 287 I took some nice pictures of the storm and the wall cloud and I heard later via Facebook that it produced a brief spin up near Wiley.  I was disappointed that I didn't see this, it might have happened whilst I was driving, as I was in the location at the time.  I think it was the Severewarningsystems.com guys that saw it, I am envious that I missed it and would love to see some video or a photo of it...