My Honda Element has a great viewing spot.
On May 18, Kathy Velasquez and I aimed for the point where extreme western Texas met New Mexico, in the only warm air on the front that wasn’t in Mexico.
We went to El Paso and then north into New Mexico to chase the storms there. As a bonus, we saw a variety of scenery along the way.
Roll over each image to see the caption, or click on one to see a slide show with larger photos.
On the way to extreme western Texas, we found lovely wildflowers. I believe this is rose gentian.
More Texas wildflowers.
Prairie coneflower in Texas.
Prairie coneflower in Texas.
A carpet of pink on the side of the road.
Lingering fog and rain from the cold front shrouded the Guadalupe Mountains.
Haze under the cold front enhanced the mystery of the Guadalupe Mountains.
An abandoned hotel near the salt flats along Route 180 in Texas caught our eye.
Graffiti artists had made their mark.
Have a seat?
Wings - and weather.
Broken doorways at the abandoned hotel.
The walls were falling down.
A small water tower remains at the hotel site.
A bathroom? Perhaps once upon a time.
Crumbling walls.
Adobe brick is exposed at the decaying hotel site.
Nature encroaches on the ruins.
First the roof, then the wall ...
Interesting cloud feature over the roofless structure.
On to El Paso - and a UFO house.
Southwest of Alamogordo, New Mexico, we stopped to watch developing storms. Nice mammatus!
This storm had a pretty hail core.
The storm develops laminar features.
A UFO? No, a storm.
The storm crosses the highway.
My Honda Element has a great viewing spot.
The storm kept its strength as it crossed the road.
It moves east...
And the storm appears to eat the mountains.
A new storm gets frisky.
The first storm munches on the mountains!
After driving through hail on the road, we moved on to White Sands National Monument.
Pretty clouds, pretty gypsum dunes at White Sands.
An Arctic outpost? No, the White Sands picnic area.
One more look at the White Sands picnic area - an abandoned colony on a rainy day.
