Category Archives: Storm Chasing

Margie and I will be storm chasing off and on this week, so you can follow us via the image below or at this link here. The pattern is not looking very favorable at all, but we will likely try to target the TX or OK panhandles on Memorial Day.

I’ll leave this post up if/when we venture out, and will possibly add some pics (if we by some miracle we see anything).

We’ve had a few low level moisture intrusions into the Albuquerque area the past several days. I’ve been hoping for some convection to develop along the Sandias, however we have only been teased by a few towering cumulus clouds with any thunderstorm activity remaining farther east in the plains of eastern New Mexico and west Texas. A notably stronger moisture push is expected tonight (Thursday night), and I am hoping for some storms and possibly some lightning photo opportunities tomorrow evening and into the weekend.

day one (June 3rd)

I departed ABQ early with a target area of roughly Liberal to Dodge City, KS for Tuesday the 3rd. I knew it was a low probability for tornadoes, but there was decent instability and the chance for isolated supercells piqued my interest. I just had to satisfy my itch to chase, and the thought of at least seeing some isolated structure was enough for me to choose that area. South of Liberal, KS into the OK panhandle I chased a couplet of storms which very interestingly formed side by side with no other significant convection to compete with.

Here’s a few images from the storms.

day two (June 4th)

After staying the night in Garden City, KS I knew I would be heading north, but I really didn’t want to drive all the way into Nebraska. However a stationary front draped near the NE/KS state line became the only initiation point for convection, and I ended up chasing the day in SW Nebraska. I watched one tornado warned storm north of Arapahoe, NE and watched an impressive new updraft developing south of the storm. After finally meandering around this newly formed storm I was finally able to see some substantial rotation from the mesocyclone, however no well-defined wall cloud or funnel ever took shape.

Seeing that this storm was just going to tease me with broad and sluggish rotation, I opted to head west and wait for the next tornado warned cell that was quickly surging eastward toward me. It was difficult for me to get into a favorable position for this storm without a decent W to E oriented road option. I only caught a brief glimpse of the structure with this beast before the RFD winds overtook me. Here’s the radar imagery from Goodland; the storm of interest has the red ring around it.

These first two images of the updraft base and attendant wall cloud were enhanced/brightened some to reveal the structure. By this time ambient light was very low, and I didn’t have enough time to take a long exposure on my tripod.

Within what seemed like only 60 seconds of taking the two above images, the base passed just to my north, and I was slammed by 50mph RFD winds. The cold RFD winds were a quick clue that this monster wasn’t going to produce a tornado, so I immediately began looking at my options to intercept the next upstream cell.

I tried to go north, but hit some quarter size hail and chickened out on trying to hit another W to E oriented road option. Darkness was setting in quickly, so I finally decided to just drift southward a few miles to avoid any hail from the next approaching storm, and I thought I would take a stab at some long exposure photography of it in the meantime.

In hindsight, I was really glad I ducked south when I did after hearing that other fellow chasers had lost windshields to baseball sized hail just a few miles to my north while I was safely photographing the above image.

day three (June 5th)

I decided not pursue the “high risk” area of forecasted storms across central and eastern portions of Nebraska and Kansas on the 5th, because of the distance and fast storm motion mostly. I still encountered my fair share of severe convection, as I slowly and methodically dodged cells before stopping in Goodland, KS for a rendezvous with my former coworkers.

I arrived back into Albuquerque this afternoon. I won’t go into too many details, but it was a difficult two days of chasing to say the least. The 40-50mph storm motion was just too much for me to keep up with. I was under a left moving cell on Thursday that was exhibiting a great deal of anticyclonic rotation, but no tornado. I felt I was in great position on 3 separate cells on Friday, but still failed to see anything more than ragged structure and brief rotation. The fast storm motion combined with low LCLs (essentially cloud bases), fog, and stratus and really limited visibility of any organization. It felt like the equivalent of chasing a hurricane and expecting to see cloud structure. I only snapped about 15 pictures, and nothing really turned out. It was very frustrating…lots of miles and no results on a very active day. I’ve never chased such a fast paced and high-impact event like this. Chasing alone really made it difficult to navigate into favorable positions, analyze the data, keep a visual on storm features, and much less drive with all the hazards of other chasers, deer, muddy roads, 40kt synoptic surface wind gusts, and tennis ball-sized hail. Hopefully the first week of June will give me something.