John Farley
Supporter
I tracked an intense supercell from just south of Trinidad, CO to near Des Moines, NM. Here is a picture of the storm in its early stages, as it formed a nice wall cloud southeast of Trinidad:
This picture was taken from east of Trinchera, looking west. With the storm moving toward me, I cut south from Branson, CO into NM, crossing (barely) ahead of the storm. This is when things got pretty interesting. In hail and barely ahead of the meso, I looked up through the windshield and saw this:
These photos were hastily taken through the windshield and passenger window - I was right in the path and way too close to stop. At the time I was sure it was a funnel cloud, maybe even a tornado given how low it appeared to extend, though I saw no ground circulation. However, a couple minutes later, when I was able to safely stop and look back, this is what I saw:
After some discussion with others, I am pretty sure that what was actually going on was some striations wrapping around the meso - but when I was nearly right underneath, my perspective made it look like the one I could see at the time was extending toward the ground more than it actually was.
In any case, I continued to track the storm southeast to Des Moines, NM as it produced up to 1.5 inch hail according to reports, as well as another pretty low wall cloud. Biggest hail I got in was around an inch, but I tried pretty hard to stay ahead of the hail.
Also saw a couple other interesting storms, including an earlier LP supercell that followed a similar track but slightly farther north, and a nice shelf cloud associated with a later storm northeast of Raton, NM. As usual, I will post a full report to my Web page as time permits, and will post a link here when I do.
This picture was taken from east of Trinchera, looking west. With the storm moving toward me, I cut south from Branson, CO into NM, crossing (barely) ahead of the storm. This is when things got pretty interesting. In hail and barely ahead of the meso, I looked up through the windshield and saw this:
These photos were hastily taken through the windshield and passenger window - I was right in the path and way too close to stop. At the time I was sure it was a funnel cloud, maybe even a tornado given how low it appeared to extend, though I saw no ground circulation. However, a couple minutes later, when I was able to safely stop and look back, this is what I saw:
After some discussion with others, I am pretty sure that what was actually going on was some striations wrapping around the meso - but when I was nearly right underneath, my perspective made it look like the one I could see at the time was extending toward the ground more than it actually was.
In any case, I continued to track the storm southeast to Des Moines, NM as it produced up to 1.5 inch hail according to reports, as well as another pretty low wall cloud. Biggest hail I got in was around an inch, but I tried pretty hard to stay ahead of the hail.
Also saw a couple other interesting storms, including an earlier LP supercell that followed a similar track but slightly farther north, and a nice shelf cloud associated with a later storm northeast of Raton, NM. As usual, I will post a full report to my Web page as time permits, and will post a link here when I do.
