I had such big plans to chase the last 1/2 of May but the atmosphere, had less ambitious plans. Still, a localized event with marginal moisture but plenty of shear presented itself in east-central New Mexico — with supercells possible. I gave it a go and ended up seeing a couple of interesting storms as well as a possible land spout just east of Albuquerque.
I also made some ‘friends’ somewhere outside of Santa Rosa, when I lost all situational awareness and met the local angry ant colony. They were not happy with my intrusion onto their territory.
You can notice a few things about the storms on this day — the mega drought ongoing in the Southwest really made these storms look dry, with wimpy storm cores the longer they existed. The other problem these storms deal with was the sheer height of the cloud bases meant establishing any low level features was incredibly difficult. Each of the storms I saw all showed their best, most developed supercell looks early on in the process, with wall clouds and rounded bases — every storm ended up undercut due to surging outflow under the base. The final storm actually killed itself because of this.
It was fascinating to see in person, and it was an interesting and relaxed chase. Lots to learn from this one as always, check it out!
GEAR I USE
Panasonic G9: https://amzn.to/3CxdWLo
Panasonic 12-35mm: https://amzn.to/3M4tOIl
Panasonic 12-60mm: https://amzn.to/3e3pWuC
Panasonic X1500: https://amzn.to/3Cx0NCc
GoPro: https://amzn.to/3e1FL5h
Insta 360 One X2: https://amzn.to/3SCPxcS
Pelican Case: https://amzn.to/3SL06ue
