Day 8: Gering, NE to Raton, NM

Another long day on the road for Day 8, with my first view of the Rockies. Big roads, big trucks and big wind farms through Nebraska:

The next photo is on the road approaching Colorado Springs, CO. We pulled over not far from town to watch a nice isolated storm form on the edge of the Rockies. Several started to form along the front of the range by mid-afternoon, but nothing severe yet:

As we headed up in to the Rockies themselves we watched as a line of more severe storms formed to our west. We drove over Raton pass, New Mexico, which is nearly 8,000ft altitude, and found a thick covering of hail from the storms we'd just missed. We spoke to a local at our hotel who said the hail was extrememly intense but nothing bigger than 1 inch in size. The temperature dropped down to nearly 5°C here; the coldest of the trip: