STORM TRACK: September 30, 1985 (Volume 8 Issue 6)
Keith Brewster wrote of a "typical 'chasers hard luck' fish tale. ... On May 7th, I was returning from a visit to the National Meteorological Center in Washington, D.C. with my supervisor, Dr. Tom Schlatter. We stopped in at the Baltimore WSO prior to our flight and noticed mid-50 dew point air and upslope conditions in NE Colorado (at Akron, roughly along our flight path). Without much additional surface information and noting the lack of significant upper-level forcing, it was hard to get too excited -- but I did take my camera on board.
The flight plan took us into Nebraska, well north of convection in eastern Kansas, but as we crossed into Colorado (approximately 6:00 PM MDT), I saw through the south (i.e. left) window a crisp tower reaching to about 30,000 ft. I had, of course, drawn a seat on the opposite side of the aircraft, affording a perfect view of a decrepit storm to the distant NW. After several minutes of craning my neck to see over the other sleeping or otherwise inattentive passengers (including a woman with what seemed like an enormous pompadour, bent over reading a fashion magazine), I decided to crawl out of my seat and get a better view. Unfortunately, the plane was sufficiently filled so that there were no vacant window seats. I settled for passing my . camera to Tom, who was a few rows up and fortunately in a window seat on that side of the plane. After a lull in the activity, I retreived my camera hoping the storm to the NW would intensify, when suddenly Tom came back to say there was a monster storm looming up on the south side. Sure enough, moments later, rock hard cumulus was visible to the south, extending well above flight level (35,000 ft).
By this time, there were only two (or maybe just one) shots left, in my camera, with the rest of the film tucked away in my suitcase. Tom got a photo of the storm (illustrated above, left) "and as the plane moved further west of the storm, a tell-tale white swath of hail emerged as well as a rainbow below the melting layer. Note, however, I could see none of this ... I was literally pulling my hair out, as I heard the pilot point out the hail swath. Meanwhile Tom had discovered that there had been only one shot left on the roll. Ohh, what I would have done for one less shot of the Washington monument!!
(There have, of course, been many other letters and phone calls to Storm Track, which are not acknowledged here. These will be included in future issues. Now, however, the Editor turns to the unusually varied and richly abundant/interesting material in his files on the rest of Storm Chase '85.)
