Hot Shots: Tornado sighting, train collision, unmanned midair fueling

It happened in Grant County, Washington. Freight Bambino removed dust and dirt from the fawn’s mouth and nose to help its breathing. He fed the deer water and small pieces of Pop-Tarts until it was able to walk away, meeting up with another deer that was presumably its mother. Kudos, Freight Bambino!

Say it ain’t snow

The summer solstice is only 11 days away. However, Old Man Winter hasn’t quite loosened his grip on the Cascades of Washington state. Plenty of snow is still covering the ground and road near Paradise Mount Rainier, about 5,400 feet above sea level.

The picture above is from the south slope of Mount Rainier in Mount Rainier National Park. Meteorologists at the National Weather Service (NWS) in Seattle told FreightWaves that snowpack is quite common here in early to mid-June. Bare ground at 5,000 feet and above isn’t consistently found until July in most years.

Fill ’er up

History was made June 4 when a Boeing test plane became the first unmanned aircraft to ever refuel another aircraft.

During the midair pit stop, a manned Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet approached the Boeing-owned MQ-25 T1, conducted a formation evaluation, wake survey and drogue tracking before plugging into the unmanned aircraft. The T1 then successfully transferred fuel from its Aerial Refueling Store (ARS) to the F/A-18.

According to the U.S. Navy, testing with the T1 will continue over the next several months to include flight envelope expansion, engine testing and deck handling demonstrations aboard an aircraft carrier later this year.

What a view

It’s not every day that someone gets to see a tornado from thousands of feet up in the sky. But it happened Monday when an airline passenger caught a breathtaking view of a landspout, a type of tornado, while descending into Denver.

The landspout touched down in Firestone, Colorado, and stayed on the ground for 7.5 miles. It lifted just northeast of Platteville, Colorado, about 40 miles north of Denver International Airport. The NWS rated it an EF-1, with peak winds of 99 mph.

Off track

A train hit a Fort Worth, Texas, police car Monday afternoon that was stopped on the tracks. Nobody was in the car. Officers were chasing someone on foot behind a Fiesta grocery store on West Bolt Street near Hemphill Street in Fort Worth, police said.

The police car was left on the tracks and an incoming train ran collided with it. According to a report from Fort Worth station KXAS-TV, no one was injured in the accident.

Click here for more FreightWaves articles by Nick Austin.

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