Arizona Desert Monsoon Chasing

[ian cameron]

yep feeling a fair bit better thanks all oh well Paul there is someone else to give you a cold while on tour good job claire

[duckeyh]

Thx Ian..I was always told to share my things

Edited August 15, 2011 by duckeyh

[the storm fisherman]

Hi all

Excuse the typing I am on my iPhone

Arrived safe and well at my hotel tonight. After a great afternoon in Richmond catching up with some very old friends

All this talk of hot air and colds all I have to say is save the hot air for the updraft and leave the colds and flu at the airport back here in the uk

Yes camras at the ready I think we are in for a busy couple of weeks foolishly I have promised to get some awsom shots

[Tom Lynch]

OK all have a safe and sucessful trip and bag a few nice photos.

Tom

[Dorsetbred]

Yeh have a great trip everyone, Paul will let you know about the additional payments required to turn the air-con on in the car once you're there

I heard you charge by each degree of cooling applied, kinda gonna get expensive for the mad english peeps in the midday sun aint it?

Welcome to the Sherminator Slush (puupy) fund

Edited August 16, 2011 by Dorsetbred

[Supercell]

I'm relying on this thread for lightning. Haven't seen any since tour one !

[John Hanrahan]

Have a great time guys and gals. Looking forward to the updates!

[Paul Sherman]

Well we were treated to a nice little T-Storm with some nice Cg's and a splash of rain on our arrival tonight, have not even unpacked the Camera's yet but it cooled the temps from 104f down to 96f briefly. Looking like SE Arizona tomorrow and the Tuscon area.

Paul S

[jimbo36]

are we there yet?

[davelp]

Have a great tour. Lots of pictures please.

[Roger J Smith]

Heading down later today to LAS. Should be starting to tour on Friday, not sure how much internet contact we will have, could be just some verbal reports followed by the pix near end of the tour.

I'm also optimistic about our chances as moisture is spreading slowly north. Bone dry today from here to there, so will be seeing all the scenery. Arriving LAS at sunset, if on time. Good luck to the chase team. Your timing looks perfect, the past four days were quite inactive, now it's ramping up again.

[IanM]

Good luck out there, remember slip slap slop, plenty of fluids (bud doesn't count), and keep them cameras clicking.

I'm relying on you to all enjoy the tour, get some awesome shots and make it possible for me to go next year ;-)

[duckeyh]

The views from PHX car rentals are significantly better than the views at DFW

Edited August 17, 2011 by duckeyh

[dogs32]

many happy days everyone....enjoy wishing u all the bestand many fantastic lightning shots

Edited August 17, 2011 by dogs32

[Roger J Smith]

General report from chase group 2 (duo) -- all has gone smoothly for us, spent Thursday in Las Vegas (sunny, 42 C r.h. -2% or perhaps a touch higher) on the "Strip" which is massive and other-worldly, pictures will eventually follow on chase day threads from us (so far using the sort of paid internet access stations where downloading your pix would be either impossible or expensive) ... as I said previously, our pix may appear on the day threads after we get home say Wed 24th.

Anyway, getting back to our tour (scenery then storm chase if possible) we left Vegas in our rental car on Friday morning, buzzed up the increasingly scenic I-15 to St George Utah, a city of about 100,000 which looks ideal for an overnight stay for any future reference, and took the southern route to Kanab Utah which takes you past Colorado City AZ (on the border) which is apparently a polygamist town, my wife still with me (hope you're following my desert train of thought), scenery quite nice throughout this stretch, arrived Kanab UT for base camp motel at 4 pm MDT (Las Vegas is on PDT by the way). Kanab is a small town of about 4,000 souls and 100 motels, there's a western movie festival in town this weekend (the region around here is prime western cinematography material), so motel spaces are currently very limited (main tour take note, if heading here before Monday night when spaces should become available). Friday evening, drove out of town to Coral Pink Sand Dunes (state park/UT) which is very impressive (pix to follow) -- otherwise the scenery right around here is eye-catching if not spectacular typical cowboys and Indians sort of red-rock mesas and buttes. Weather for us on Friday was mainly sunny with a lot of cirrus visible to our southeast over the Grand Canyon, hot but not oppressive as we climbed up to the plateau (elevation here is 4500' and Coral Pink is 6400'). Max temp in Las Vegas had been heading for 43 C, it was 39 C in St George at 1pm and 34 C in Kanab at 4 pm, no humidity, feels quite pleasant out of the direct sun.

Today (Sat 20th I think) we are heading for Bryce Canyon north of here, and the back country to its southeast taking a circle route back to base camp in Kanab. So far sunny and 27 C at 10:00 a.m., ACC visible to our southeast, forecast is for scattered afternoon thunderstorms especially where we're headed.

Bryce Canyon is probably the most scenic park of them all so expect my day 4 (?) pix when they are added to be quite a treat. Compared to Grand Canyon, you're looking into rather than down on a vast display of canyons, hoodoos (rock statues), arches and mesas in considerably more colour (Grand Canyon tends to be mainly purple, pink, grey, where Bryce is brighter rock colours similar to my avatar). We'll hope that nature co-operates and bubbles up some CBs over the higher plateau (Bryce is generally 7,000 to 8,000 ft asl) as is often the case around there. In that case we will also have storm or at least lightning shots for you very soon.

Plan is to head into southeast Utah on Sunday, tour Zion and Cedar Breaks located to our northwest on Monday, and return to Las Vegas late Monday for our flight home Tuesday.

Short but sweet. Hitting the road now after I check the threads on the main storm chase. See ya,