2022-06-03 REPORTS: NM/CO/KS/TX

[John Farley]

I caught a very photogenic dryline supercell between Vaughan and Fort Sumner, NM. No tornadoes, but a lot of eye candy, and golfball hail a few miles ahead of me as it crossed US 60 near Yeso, NM. Here are a few pictures; will post a full report on my Web pages as time permits.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Last chase day of Storm Chase 2022. Targeted southeast corner of CO, which was in Slight Risk but no tornado risk. I left the specific target to be refined, but was thinking roughly Las Animas / Baca counties, with the possibility of having to go north to the latitude of Route 50 (Lamar / La Junta). HRRR model had shown more linear storms in the northern target, but one or two discrete cells in the southern target.

My rule is to have a full tank of gas at sometime between 3 and 5pm, ideally before going into "chase mode." In Springfield, I declined to gas up, figuring I would wait until we had gone west to Kim. Guess what - no gas stations in Kim. The dashboard showed we still had a 200 mile range, but now that we knew there was no gas between Springfield and Kim, I started to get concerned about fueling up if we were to begin repositioning or chasing in this general area. There was a cell coming off the mountains in Trinidad so we continued west; although out of our target area, it was now only about 20 miles away and our next chance for gas. But then a cell went up back to our east near Kim, which was in our target area. So back we went, but knowing there was no gas in Kim we were now committed to having to go all the way back to Springfield. By then the cell had died, so that gave us the time to go to Springfield to fill up.

A second cell went up near Kim, so we went west again to intercept. It looked good briefly, but quickly turned HP. We got the photos shown below. The storm was moving SE, so we had to use dirt roads to stay with it, which I generally try to avoid if possible. Heading east, the dirt road suddenly narrowed and turned too bad to use (just one reason I avoid dirt roads), so we had to go north; by now it was raining and I was concerned about the dirt roads getting bad (which is another reason to avoid them...) We turned when we were able, and got out ahead of the rain.

Meanwhile, there were two tornado warnings in the northern storms west of Lamar. At first I disregarded these as spin-ups on the edge of the line, but then the cells started to separate a bit. They were about 60 miles away from us based on a quick check of radar, and I didn't think they were worth going after. We stayed with ”our” storm, but at this point we’re just trying to get out of rain on dirt roads and make it to paved Route 385. By the time we did, the storms to the north only had severe warnings on them and already east of Route 385. We called it a day and went to Lamar for dinner and lodging.

There was a tornado report on one of the storms west of Lamar, in which the person reported he was "picked up in a truck", "rotated 120 degrees" and "had his windows blown" out... In retrospective, the more northern target along Route 50 would have been better. I was pretty confident the surface conditions were more favorable down toward Springfield, but what do I know... Colorado is often confusing; once storms go up, it seems pretty much random as to which one(s) will produce... I have only seen two tornados in Colorado in approximately 25 years of chasing - Trinidad in 2001 and Campo in 2010. This is partly a function of the timing of my trips - for example, I wasn't around for Wray - but I still find it a confusing, though often surprising and magical, place to chase.

It turns out my favorite Asian restaurant on the Plains, Thai Spicy Basil in Lamar, had closed down! Perhaps a victim of the pandemic? We found a Mexican place instead, La Mission Villanueva. Passable food, but at least they had beer and margaritas