Dirt Clouds in the Texas Panhandle

I have always been terrified of storms. Maybe that comes from growing up in tornado alley. Joe on the other hand loves looking at them and chasing them around (personally I think he is a little crazy). While living in Amarillo we had several roam around and take pictures of storms adventures, mostly of storms rolling into town.

Part of the reason he did this is because the Texas Panhandle is flat and has no trees, so you can literally see for miles with nothing obstructing your view. The other reason is you can get some really neat pictures.

One day as the wind was kicking up, and the clouds were rolling in Joe decided that he wanted to see if he could capture the storm’s essence in a picture. We “kidnapped” my mom and were driving east on I-40 trying to get out far enough ahead of the storm. As we were driving Joe asks me to look behind us and tell him what I see.

What did I see? A cloud of dirt. He decided to pull off the highway and get his gear ready. I thought, seriously this is going to be the worst picture ever. What is he thinking? Well, I really didn’t know what he was thinking because instead of just taking a picture of what was directly behind us (the dirt cloud), he took about five shots and merged it into a panoramic picture.

This picture is the result, and if you look in the middle, what do you see? A dirt cloud, but if you look at the entire picture, which is what he saw, you see an incredible picture of a storm cloud rolling into town.