The 2020 monsoon season had a decent enough start, but as the calendar turned to August it seemed like we couldn’t maintain a good moisture fetch to save our lives.

Still, we were able to squeeze out a few good storm setups in New Mexico, mostly east of the central mountain chain where moisture from the Gulf of Mexico combined with decent wind shear to create environments favorable for severe storms including supercells.

The New Mexican monsoon’s unique calling card is that the monsoon fetch of moisture can lead to ‘traditional’ storm chases as much as the pulse deserty types of storms — so you almost get an extended hybrid storm season from the Spring months in that regard. As with all storm chasing, I have to balance work PTO and my love for storms, and this year much of my monsoon adventures were spent around weekends due to the generally lackluster moisture. I kept holding off on chasing the high 40 dewpoint pulse-storm setups in central and southern New Mexico thinking that BIGGER and BETTER moisture would arrive at the 11th hour but it just never did.

Still, the few days I did chase were all really memorable in August. As this non-binary artist would like to say, “It’s the quality, not the quantity.”

Or something like that. I hope you enjoy the second half of the monsoon season in New Mexico and as I say in the video, I truly can’t wait for the 2021 season! May it finally be something akin to normal!