The Southwest - Winter 2007 A Close encounter with the storm
Lou says...
Our third night was spent in Santo, Texas and the last weather report we listened to, which was the day before, indicated the storm would not arrive for another two days. It was 65 degrees when left camp in the morning and pointed the rig towards Carlsbad, NM. We had been to the caverns on our last trip but I wanted to go back to take more pictures using some new techniques that I had learned.
We headed north towards route 180 which would take us all the way to Carlsbad. Route 180 is only 30 miles north of Santo but by time we reached it the temperature had fallen to 40 degrees and it was raining persistently. As we listened to NOAA we realized we were going through the leading edge of the storm!
Worse yet ice was predicted by 5 PM along our route. We had planned to stay one night on this leg of the trip but that plan was quickly scrapped. If we continued on directly to Carlsbad we would arrive there between 5 and 6, just missing the bad weather. We pushed on, ate lunch while driving and arrived in Carlsbad at 5 PM.
As we arrived in Carlsbad the west edge of the weather system was just passing overhead and moving out to the east. To the West the sun was shinning creating a beautiful rainbow in the gloomy eastern sky. Val captured a great picture of the rainbow with her point and shoot camera.
