A break in the storm Saturday night drew a crowd of about a dozen gawkers -- Unfair Park among them -- alongside the network TV vans for a look at what remained of the Cowboys' training bubble.
WFAA's Arnold Payne captured this chilling video of the collapse from inside, but by 6 p.m. it looked like the weather had calmed down, and reporting crews made camp by the chain link fence behind the Gold's Gym that borders the training facility. (Bonus video ... from German TV.) For an insider's perspective, DallasCowboys.com's Nick Eatman provides this account of the moment "fear started creeping in."
Families rolled past for a look out their car windows, or parked in the gym lot and sloshed through mud for a photo of the wreckage through the fence. Baffled looks and nods at the white dome cover and exposed metal were all that passed between most of them.
The corner full of TV reporters became the rallying point for more interested visitors, anxious to hear the latest word, while the newsmen tried to recognize people milling around, a few hundred feet away, beside the fire truck parked beside the bubble.
As storm clouds thickened overhead, though, talk turned to rumors of more lightning strikes close by, and all made meaningful glances up at the towering TV antennas raised up from the news vans. A middle-aged man with an Australian accent told one family he'd been chasing the storm for hours, and could see it was going to get worse before it got better. "I've got better radar than NOAA right now," he told them, "and there's going to be lots more lightning." As the rains picked back up, the crowd dispersed back across the parking lot to their cars.