Severe thunderstorms struck the border lands of Texas and New Mexico on Friday, resulting in tornadoes in Logan and Clovis, N.M., and hailstorms in the Route 66 town Tucumcari, N.M., that knocked out many of the famed neon signs in town, according to the Quay County Sun.
Bill Kinder, co-owner of the Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, said the three-quarter-inch hail that fell about 2:30 p.m. Friday shattered nearly all of its neon lighting, including the famed blue swallow on its main sign and the architectural neon on the main motel building.
“There’s only two letters that are working right now,” he said.
The hail also broke the east side of the Teepee Curios neon sign across the street, and also many other neon signs in town along Route 66.
“Coming from the east, it was weird” to not see the neon signs lighted as night fell later Friday, Kinder said.
Kinder said that damage to the neon lighting is not covered by insurance in this instance. So damage at the Blue Swallow is likely to be at least a couple thousand dollars. Kinder said there appeared to be no structural damage to the motel itself.
Kinder said that many parts of town still don’t have phone service after the storm. He talked to me on his cell phone.
A fund has been set up to help the Blue Swallow and other Tucumcari businesses whose neon signs sustained severe damage in the storm.
Send a check payable to the nonprofit “Friends of the Mother Road” (with “Tucumcari neon” in the memo line) to:
Friends of the Mother Road
c/o Kip Welborn
3947 Russell
St. Louis, MO 63110
Donations are tax-deductible.
I was through Tucumcari Friday night at dusk and was surprised to see it so dark; I’d diverted there to photograph the Blue Swallow at twilight. I didn’t know about the hail.
The Buckaroo, on the west end of town, and the Americana toward the middle, were the only neon motel signs I saw lit. I assumed at the time I was just a bit early to see the others or that they did not keep lights on when closed or not expecting travelers this early in the season. Parts of the La Cita restaurant were not lit. The Odeon and VFW neon signs downtown looked OK and I photographed them.
As I left Tucumcari 30 minutes later, I saw two portions of the city go dark, one shortly after another due to (I assume) power outages.
Earlier in the day I had seen hail on the ground at Moriarity; the rotosphere at El Comedor looked OK, though it was not lit.
I had to drive through that storm on the way to Amarillo for the night; it was a nasty one.