4/28/09 REPORTS: NM

[Ben Holcomb]

David Drummond and I observed 2 supercells in New Mexico yesterday. One near Roswell and the other south and east of Carlsbad.

I have posted a recap at http://www.benholcomb.com/20090428.html

David has posted amazing lightning photos and his recap on his blog at http://daviddrummond.com/blog/2009/04/29/042809-storm-chase-recap/

 

[David Hoadley]

I was also on the Carlsbad storm and saw one distant, brief tornado 5 minutes after the 7:53PM CDT tornado warning for a storm 24 miles south of CNM. I was driving down US 285. Against a distant rain curtain 10-15 miles west was a thin, dark, laminar tube from the ground up about 1,500 feet. The top part was lost in precip. It persisted for seveal seconds, until I could stop the car and grab a camera but of course was gone before I was ready to tape. It was distinct from all other cloud features, so I am sure it was there.

 

[Mike Hardiman]

I headed to Carlsbad Tuesday as well and was liking the >=60F dewpoints that were nosing up into extreme SE New Mexico. However, I "took the bait" and went up to the Roswell storm after seeing all the thick high clouds that were pushing in from the south and west. The Roswell storm was rather LP when arrived... though it did load up some high reflectivity aloft, dropped its load, then weakened as it headed ENE.

Of course, shortly after that, storms did go up along the Northeast edge of the Guadalupes, despite the thick high clouds, aided by strong upslope. (D'oh!)

Interesting to note the role terrain played in initation. The Roswell storm first developed in sort of the "box" formed by the N-S oriented Sacramentos and the E-W oriented Capitan Mountains. The Carlsbad storms developed on the edge of the Guadalupes that runs SW-NE. So places where the terrain was more normal to the low level wind direction turned out to be the only places that "produced." Other typically favored areas like the "Chaves Box" stayed quiet.

The upside was that I did get some nice shots of cloud-spillover on the west side of Guadalupe Pass on the way up.

 

[Billy Griffin]

4/28/09 REPORTS: WA

Quite an impressive day of activity on 4/28.
Account posted here: http://www.billygriffin.com/2009.htm

 

[Billy Griffin]

How did my WA report of funnel clouds wind up being moved to a NM thread?
Mods - can you help? I tried to keep the post-storm report/discussion very clean and simple, with an external link to my own webpage. If you scroll down to 4/28, the report and photos are very detailed.

Thank you,