{"id":14134,"date":"2016-02-18T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T08:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/?p=14134"},"modified":"2016-03-08T18:33:10","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T02:33:10","slug":"february-18-2016-western-nevada-storm-chase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2016\/02\/18\/february-18-2016-western-nevada-storm-chase\/","title":{"rendered":"February 18, 2016 Western Nevada Storm Chase"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"160218_0909_Esmeralda\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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On the previous evening, February 17th, the skies were getting dark and the camera was in the bag for the night. \u00a0I was sitting in the X-terra, and parked on the side of 190 on the west side of Death Valley, southwest of Stovepipe Wells by a few miles. \u00a0I was trying to decide what to do next. \u00a0Did I want to stick around out here for one more day, and check out the wildflowers here in Death Valley? \u00a0Or did I want to “call it a trip” and start the five-hour drive home? \u00a0I was thinking about just sleeping in the vehicle to save 60 bucks on the motel. \u00a0That was not appealing. \u00a0I was thinking about being in my nice and warm bed by about midnight. \u00a0That was appealing. \u00a0If I were to get a motel, it would be “over the hill” at Beatty, about an hour away. \u00a0I could not decide, and I sat there for 15 minutes. \u00a0I turned on the NOAA weather radio. \u00a0It is not unusual to just receive static on the weather frequencies way out here, but for some reason I was getting a station that was providing the forecast for Tonopah, about 100 miles to the north. \u00a0I wasn’t listening that closely as the automatic voice droned on and faded in and out. \u00a0But then I heard the word “thunderstorm.” \u00a0Huh?!<\/p>\n

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I listened closely to the next cycle, and the NWS was giving a chance of thunderstorms to the Tonopah area the next morning. \u00a0Hmmm…that was odd. \u00a0Thunderstorms in western Nevada on a February morning? \u00a0I thought that was a bit of a stretch. \u00a0But, it would be fun to see how things worked out. \u00a0I headed over to Beatty for the night.<\/p>\n

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I got out of Beatty around sunrise on the 18th. \u00a0I wasn’t particularly excited about the weather prospects about an hour up the road, but I was close, and decided to head up U.S. 95. \u00a0I spent some time lolly-gagging around the mostly-empty Sarcobatus Flats. \u00a0The light was nice on the few abandoned structures near the road. \u00a0Farther to the north, near Lida Junction, in Esmeralda County, darker clouds were looming. \u00a0South-southeasterly winds were feeding into the activity. \u00a0There was even a little low-level organization and cloud structure down the road to the north! \u00a0Now THAT is interesting! \u00a0There looked to be a storm cell with a rounded look to the base —- this was probably a supercell! \u00a0It was not a strong one, but it even had the “backwards C” shape in the leading edge of the base, which strongly suggested rotation and organization in the cell. \u00a0As luck would have it, I came right up to a road construction stop as I neared the storm. What are the odds of that —- out here in the middle of nowhere in the Nevada desert, just south of a supercell on a February morning before 9 a.m., and am stuck at a flagman. \u00a0There was NO way to chase this storm, though, as it was moving into the Nellis Test Range. \u00a0I backed off from the flagman stop and got a few more pictures, and the cell drifted off to the east into some mountains. \u00a0I saw one lightning flash in the core — whoohoo!!<\/p>\n

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Additional showers to my west forced me back south into Sarcobatus Flats. \u00a0Another weak storm with some supercell characteristics developed on the east side of the flats, with a good-sized wall cloud for a time. \u00a0Not bad for a mid-February morning in the desert! \u00a0The energy and front continued to the east, and my area was left behind with fair weather. \u00a0I filled up again at the same gas station in Beatty and began my flower-viewing jaunt into Death Valley.<\/p>\n

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