Saturday, October 11, 2008

Hail Storm

Location: Camping World, Albuquerque, NM

We were scheduled to be at the Balloon Festival through Sunday's mass ascension, but the weather forecast put a crimp in those plans. A hurricane called Norbert stirred up the weather on the Pacific coast and sent a whole bunch of bad weather heading straight for Albuquerque. We had been camped on a dirt field that would have quickly turned to mud with only a little bit of rain -- so we decided to forgo Sunday's mass ascension (which likely would have been canceled due to the wind), and move the rigs today to Camping World, twenty miles south, where I have an appointment to have some electrical work done on my rig Monday.

Click for Larger Image of Hail Waves on Parking LotShortly after we got here, the weather, which had been cloudy to partly sunny, suddenly and dramatically changed -- within a minute, rain was pelting the rigs and the visibility had shrunken to only a few feet. Then the hail began -- pea sized pellets combining with the rain to form a shallow river in the parking lot. The wind gusts were somewhere around 50 mph, and it forced hail and water into rivulets that actually flowed across the parking lot! Once it had passed, we watched the storm continue on a straight line to the festival field where we had just been parked. Looks like we made the right decision!

Once the storm had cleared, we had a beautiful sunset -- this is the view from the parking lot at Camping World, looking towards the mountains:

Click for Larger Image of Sky After The Storm

1 comment:

William & Harriet Smith said...

Great shot!
Jerry