Welcome to my first Texas summer in ages, and all that that entails -- namely thunderstorms. Here's a thundercloud out to the east, possibly over Lake Amistad, although I can't be certain of that. I've since found out that you don't have to be near a large body of water to get the crap kicked out of you. One of these storms came rolling in the other day and I thought my trailer was going to get blown over. What a ride! Why I didn't catch the effect on video is beyond me. Dang!
And here's another big bruiser, this one a little closer but still in the same general direction. This one is shaping up nicely.
The same stormcloud, just a little later on in my drive. Boy, this thing is blossoming out beautifully. Just look at the flow of those clouds. This one would prove to be a harbinger of things to come this evening, though not as severe or prolonged as the previous storm. It still gave us cause for pause, though.
And here she comes! Now, this isn't the same cloud that we saw just now, but another cloud in the whole system of buttkickers. One of the guys here said he saw a funnel touch down, but I never saw one and the National Weather Service didn't, either. Sure looks like the kind of cloud you'd expect one in, though, especially that area just above and to the right of the trees.
These are called mammatus clouds and are always associated with very severe storms, possibly tornadic in nature. (Did you ever see the movie Twister?) Right after this shot, the blow started and we began to get pelted with rain, but it didn't last long. The last time a storm like this hit the area, 40 power poles were knocked down by a tornado somewhere between the Black Gap Wildllife Management Area -- right next door -- and Marathon, some 40 miles away. Not so this time, thank goodness. Whew! Once is enough, thank you very much.So, moving on to things a little less threatening, here we have a video of a curious little creature I ran across the other day -- a millipede (Latin for "thousand feet"). I've seen their bleached white husks here and there, but this is the first time I've seen one alive and moving. Very smooth. This guy's about five inches long, which is larger than any I've ever seen before. In reading up on them in Wikipedia, I found out that there are 10,000 species of millipede throughout the world, the largest of which is the African Giant Black Millipede, which can grow to over 15 inches long! That's one big bug, folks.
Ending this blog entry on a humorous note, here we have a video of Pancho, our resident "Paisano" (roadrunner), having it out with himself in the mirrored front door to the Visitor Center. Roadrunners were called Paisanos -- or "Little Friends" -- by the early native Mexican inhabitants in the Big Bend area due to their habit of following the cattle herds and eating the insects stirred up by the cattle's hooves. I'd say Pancho looks pretty stirred up himself right now. What a hoot!
