We departed Goodland, KS early enough this morning in preparation for a
chase along the terrain of northern NM today. The MCS the evening
prior dove south into the TX Panhandle and left behind a great outflow
boundary that pushed westward much of the day into eastern NM. We
took I-40 west to Tucumcari and then headed northwest on HWY 104 to evaluate
some development observed on the vis satellite courtesy of Phil's awesome
cell phone-based wx data program. We noticed a couple soft anvils
well to our west and after arriving near Conchas Dam we saw that whatever
had fired them off quickly collapsed as they were now just orphan anvils
and virga. A short while later we saw an isolated cell NW of the
city that was LPish in nature, but it was ingesting too much cool air from
the virga and was not destined for success. So we took state road
129 south to the interstate with the hopes of getting further west towards
better roads.
While on the way to the interstate we saw a stubby inflow tail take shape
far to our SW attached to a modest updraft base. This cell sure didn't
look like much at first, but when I noticed a pocket of inverted Cu next
to a sharpening updraft my adrenaline kicked in big time! This storm
was becoming a supercell before our eyes. We pulled over twice to
get stills and video of the great structure; though we were quickly warned
to get back in our vehicles by frequent anvil- to-ground bolts. We
did document at least one wall cloud from a distance in addition to a couple
left-splits being kicked out of this behemoth. Upon arriving at I-40,
the outflow boundary mentioned earlier was surging westward and kicking
off another supercell to our SW. Our original cell was now immediately
in front of us and moving ESE. We managed to escape the FFD and pulled
over at a Love's gas station in Santa Rosa to observe these two supercells
along with yet another one rapidly taking off just to the west of the city.
Since the outflow boundary had overrun the initial cell and cut it off,
this new one would bode better for us. We punched west on I-40 twice
(stink'n exit for HWY 54 wasn't labeled!) and saw a non-rotating wall cloud
with decent structure above it. Since sunset was nearing, we felt
we could try and get on the western side of this supercell for some sunlit
structure shots, but it was not to be. The outer edge of the FFD
was already dropping 1" stones on us and since we were in rentals we didn't
want to push our luck much further. So we called it a day and headed
back to Santa Rosa for the night. |
