So today we are heading out to Torrington, WY – Larime Range to chase super cells that will be heading towards the Nebraska panhandle. Our first stop of the day will be to sneak a peak at the Crazy Horse Rock sculpture on the Avenue of the Chiefs Us Hwy 16/385. This sculpture has been underway for several years, and the carver works on it as he gets funds to allow him to continue. It is truly a labor of love and will be quite impressive when it is finished.

We then travel through Hot Springs and then stop in Lusk around 11:00 am at a Subway to get our breakfast/lunch. Yes storm chasers eat on the go and sometimes only eat one or two meals depending on where they are headed and how far they have to travel. While eating we check the models and the Cheyenne cell seems to be a better target now instead of Torrington so we continue heading Cheyenne. Yep go with the flow!

I am still amazed by the vast openness of land with an occasional glimpse of a heard of cows or a group horses, and a farm or ranch, but mainly there is nothing for miles and miles except empty fields with the round hay bales scattered about. By 3:50 pm the storms are collapsing so we head back to Keystone with the hopes of catching a good lighting show along the way.  While heading back north, a new cell has popped up that is within range so we go for it.

We go through Torrington and stop for a “splash & dash” fill up.  New models show a merge of two cells so we are back in the chase! Visually we can see the anvil so we set up to watch and there several nice CG’s (Cloud to Ground lightning strikes). Unfortunately there is no service, so we are not getting in any radar updates. When we do regain service, we see that the storms are regenerating so we go back to the Wyoming rest center which is a great look out area for storm spotting.  Here we can solid radar and we find that we we have another shot further north so we head back to Lusk and hit pouring rain and loose the radar again.

Rainbow alert!!!  We get to Lusk and get radar back up and ….. wait for it….. we head south! LOL The life of a chaser playing with fickle Mother Nature!

All in all the day has provided us with great photography.  A bust for storms but great photography so we are happy. We head east to get sunset shots and still look for the possibility of a good lightning show.  At 7:30 we enter Nebraska! We are treated to a beautiful sunset accompanied by Mammatus clouds lit up by the setting sun as we drive through Chardron.

During the course of the day I got treated to my second Happy Birthday duet from the boys only this time they give it a country western twang. OH MY is all I have to say to that!

What a great way to spend a birthday!