Day 9: Go Diego! Go!

    Today seemed marginal to us. Everything we looked at said there wouldn't be storms in the area today but the NWS seemed to think there would be an outbreak of storms in the afternoon. Since we didn't have anything to do, we decided to hang around for a bit and see what developed.  We were lucky that the projected area was right over the hotel.

     Dr. P took us to his old stomping grounds in old town Fort Collins. This place was pretty cool. We ate at HuHot which is a Mongolian Grill where you build your own dish with veggies, meat and seasoning and then they cook it right in front of you. I will honestly say this is first asian food that I have enjoyed eating.  After lunch we did a little bit of souvenir shopping.  Looking up to the sky we saw some clouds building and decided to head about an hour east of Fort Collins and set up for a chase.

      We happened to set up in a position we would always end up returning to when ever we tried to move. That was definitely a sign. We named this storm "Diego." There was a lot of hail associated with this storm. We drove through a hail shaft at least twice.  One time we stopped to inspect the hail...after it was done falling from the sky of course.  We measured a bunch of stones at 1 inch, but the biggest one we found was an 1.25 inches.  These were definitely the biggest hail stones I have ever seen.

    Eventually, storms started to converge on us and we had to hightail it out of dodge and head back to Fort Collins. As we were heading back, we saw that someone had reported a tornado 8 miles from our position and at first I was disappointed that we had somehow missed it. Once, I got over my disappointment I realized that, unless it was rain wrapped, there was no way there was a tornado there without us being able to see it. We were in perfect position to see that tornado and there was nothing. I think someone had a gust of wind that knocked down a tree and they called it in.

    Fort Collins is an amazing place.  I wouldn't mind vacationing or living here some day.  Not sure where we are headed next....we will go where the weather takes us.