My day started in the pitch darkness of 5:40am, where I rushed to eat the hotel's continential breakfast while obsessively refreshing the weather forecast. It was supposed to rain overnight, but that didn't happen, and now, I was supposed to encounter rain by 9:00am. I was on the road about 5 minutes after sunrise, giving me about two and a half hours before "scattered thunderstorms," and maybe three hours before the ominous forecast of simply "storm," with the image of a dark cloud with lightning.
When I do weather checks, I check the forecast where I am, and where I will be, and take a kind of mental average to see what I'll be facing in the coming hours. However, by the time 9:00am rolled around, and I got closer to Vernon, the rain had been delayed an hour by my interpolated forecast. There were clouds, and strong winds from the south which really helped me bike fast. My cruising speed today was about 30km/h, as opposed to the usual 20. I really felt like I was chasing the storm.
And so, an hour later, still no rain, and the forecast predicted an additional calm hour. This continued until 1:00pm, when I met a storm chaser in a highway rest area, who told me that he was heading to Childress, and that I better be off the roads within the hour. I reassured him that I was only planning to bike until Quanah, about 50km away from Childress.
I got to Quanah at 1:30pm, and things were starting to look bad. The clouds got so dark I could not even tell where the sun was. My phone was buzzing with a tornado watch, and the storm was on everyone's mind. Now, I should clarify the definitions here. A "tornado watch in your area" is short for "conditions are favourable for the formation of tornadoes, keep a heads up," whereas a "tornado warning in your area" is short for "we just saw tornadoes near you. They are coming your way, seek shelter immediately."
The weather forecast said that rain was supposed to start at 2:00pm, with the big storm starting at 3, and at my regular pace of 20km/h, I was to arrive at Childress at 4:00pm. But today I felt strong, and frankly, after Louisiana, I felt that if I got caught in the rain, I could still muster some biking. And so, I pushed.
I biked fast. A part of me wanted to see a tornado, and the adult part of me really really really didn't. When I was about 40 minutes away from Childress (or 30 minutes biking in a frenzy to avoid the storm), I started seeing groups of cars parked on the side of the highway. Storm hunters.
The group above, as I approached, told me that I should "haul ass out of here as fast as I could." So I did. About ten minutes away from Childress, my phone started buzzing with some curt but scary news.
What could I do? I just biked as fast as I could. I stopped quickly when a woman pulled over to tell me that there was a tornado warning. "I know! I'm getting the fuck outta here as fast as I can!" I said, and told her that I'll be in shelter within ten minutes. The entire way to Childress, I was looking back to see if the tornadoes were coming, and if I'd have to bail the bike and jump on a truck. Yet somehow, the mere existence of traffic was reassuring. If cars could drive it, I can bike it.
I pulled up to a motel check-in two minutes before the tornado sirens started, and ten minutes before the heavy rain. And all I experienced along the biking was a small drizzle. I'm now in my hotel room, moping about the fact that after that big storm, I didn't push more today - it's a beautiful cloudy day, with no rain, and a forecast of scattered thunderstorms in two hours.
Today I biked 177km, over the course of 7 and a half hours.