We started the morning off at a beautiful five-star resort in West Central Texas. The area around Crystal Springs was fully booked and this was one of the only hotels that actually had availability.

Between the chandelier and the mural on the wall I don't know what screamed I was in Texas more.

Well maybe the chandelier and the mural don't scream half as loud as the furniture and it's associated upholstery does. I guess it's a Texas thing but these are pretty cool chairs!

This poor little car was taking a beating but at least it was great on gas. Although after you spent so many hours glued to the seat of a car it begins to look more and more like a prison.

I think most people who have never actually been to Texas really have the wrong impression or idea about the state. It's actually a very diverse state with huge forests in the east and large sprawling ranches in the west. Depending on where you are or how far south you go, you can see palm trees frequently. In this particular case there were little bushes of cacti here and there scattered around like bushes and tumbleweed would be in Kansas.

We knew today was going to be the last really good storm chase day. A large ridge was moving in and the environment was going to be shut down for the rest of our trip. We figured we wanted to play the dryline and a moisture ridge just ahead of it. Our goal was Pedras Negras on the Mexican side or Eaglepass on the Texas side.

Surface weather analysis showing the conditions which gave rise to the supercell.

When I'm not driving I'm trying to kill time if there's nothing more left to analyze as far as Weather Maps go. On this particular trip I tried to take as many photos of different water towers as I could. I think in total I wound up with something like six or 700 separate water towers. One day I'll have to go through all the images and put together a large collage.

When we were still about 150 miles away from the growing supercell in Mexico, the upper portions of the storm finally came into view.

It's hard to really explain just how big some of these storms are and the huge distances they can encompass. When I took this photo we were still 70 miles away from the base of the storm. You're literally chasing a mountain in the sky and while you're closing the gap sometimes it feels like it takes for ever to get where you need to be.