The forecast was great last night, but it wasn't clear if the over
running would occur in the morning. Also it didn't pick up a patch of cirrus
that just covered the very south of Texas up to Zapata. We had no cumulus clouds
or over running in the morning due to the cirrus and the inversion combined with
a drier layer above. We had thought due to the high winds all night that there
would be moisture all the way up through Texas getting ready to turn into cu's.


There was plenty of over running up on the Edwards plateau where Robin and Gary
could see it after Robin's long flight. Gary was making his way back toward
Zapata to give it a try again on Wednesday while Robin was headed back to
Houston.


The forecast for tomorrow looks good again, but we don't have a good idea if the
over running will show up or not. The forecasts don't seem to be aware of this
phenomena twenty for or even twelve hours out.


It does appear that the old Zapata and WRE weather has returned after a few
years absence. The Bermuda high has set up (may be disturbed in a few days by a
low in the Atlantic) and that means the winds are strong (15-25 mph) out of the
southeast (145-155, paralleling the Rio Grande river). They push their way
through all the Texas and the dry line is set next to the western Texas border,
keeping the over development away.


I spoke with Robin has he drove east toward Houston. I stopped yesterday when I
would be going over an area that would make for difficult retrieves with no
clouds and only Robin to help out. That should have been enough, but with no
cu's in the offing, I felt that it wasn't worth the risk.


Robin was able to carefully get through the area between highway 59 and I35 on
his own and found lift west of highway 83 and north of I35. He started getting
good lift at about 60 miles out (I bailed at 50 miles out). It was still blue
until he was 110 miles out and then he had the clouds to guide him.


The cloud base was up to 6,000' until he got to the hill country west of Uvalde,
and then it lowered back down to 5,300'. Once he carefully worked his way
up the valley around highway 55 and got twenty five miles up on the plateau it
turned on again and he sped up again.


He was cooking along but being drawn to the north instead of the north northeast
by the clouds as he now couldn't find any lift in the blue. As he approached
Lubbock a cell to the northwest developed and blew out within half an hour and
the shading put him on the ground at 7:30 PM.