When we leave the 3,700-foot elevation lakebed this afternoon, it is only 75 degrees Fahrenheit, cool by Racetrack standards. Summers here can produce 107-degree days. But the day isn't all whoops and grins. Not all the rocks have moved. That puzzles Messina.
Most rocks move from southwest to northeast.
She speculates that storms could come from a different direction during the winter and summer. But she's going to have to look into it. Messina mapped 162 rocks in 1996, and published the results in her dissertation earlier this year. The winds push the rocks along the slick clay. Sometimes the winds converge and produce small twisters that grab two to five rocks in a parallel dance across the Racetrack.