Number 90 posted:Sometimes there can be mildly humorous moments when severe weather is near.
Around 2005, the Lubbock Trainmaster and I were out on the railroad near Muleshoe, testing crews. We had shunted the track to cause an intermediate block signal to display a Stop and Proceed indication, and were not expecting anything other than proper compliance with rules. The sky was grey, and low clouds had been scudding past rather rapidly and there was a 20 MPH wind. About 10 minutes into our wait for the next train, rain began, very lightly, but at an angle, and at that very time, a vehicle that looked like a Buck Rogers space ship drove past on the adjacent highway. For those of you not familiar with tornado alley, that is definitely a storm chaser, and he would not have been there if he did not expect a tornado to likely touch down in the area. The Trainmaster and I looked at each other, immediately headed toward our track shunt to retrieve it, and agreed that it must be green chile stew day for us, at Clovis, oh yes, definitely, how could we have forgotten to properly celebrate such an important day.
If you ever see one of those storm chase vehicles on your highway you are probably in the wrong place and have also forgotten that it's green chile stew day, far from there.
When I lived and worked in the Texas/Oklahoma Panhandle area, I saw the storm chasers all the time in the spring. Going home at the end of the day I did not mind them as they passed me on the highway if they were heading away for my home town. I did not like it when the storm chasers past me at a high rate of speed going toward my home town and the sky's were dark near my home town.
