6/9/07 REPORTS: NM

[Tom Romero]

Well, I wanted to chase on my birthday and so we did. We did not have too go far. Had a hard time deciding which side of the state to chase. Decided not to drive 3 hours SE to Clovis.

Left Santa Fe (home)to head south toward Albuquerque. We were watching the storm west of us in Grants trying to figure out a way to intercept without going to far west as there were very few N/S road options. We decided to wait in Bernalillo (about 30 miles south of Santa Fe) and try to intercept as the storm moved NE toward Cuba.

Sat in the Starbucks laughing at how close to home we were. Finished our coffee and decided to drive a little west down the road. We noticed a storm popped up directly to our north.

As we came to a crest I observed what I originally was a well defined hail core (which is very common in our NM storms) to the NE. It wasn't.

Turns out a nice little tornado was on the ground in Santo Domingo Pueblo...where I work. We watched it...took some horrible picture and, I'm sure, even worse video (what else is new). My cell phone started ringing off the hook.

The storm started to rope out so we headed back north to Santo Domingo to see if we could get ahead of the cell. Unfortunately they thought it was wise to CLOSE THE FREEWAY! Traffic was backed up for miles! I'm sure all of those people got completely cored.

After talking with the EMS guys (whose cell phone pic of the storm was awesome) we had to go 7 miles down a very rocky dirt road. We hooked up with Hwy 14 and headed N on the mountain roads through Madrid where traffic slowed to a walk. Got stuck behind a tow truck and a line of cars as the core overtook us an got smacked by nickel size hail 2 inches thick on the ground. It took us an hour to get back to the I-25. It would have normally only taken about 15 minutes.

All in all an exciting birthday present. 3 tornadoes were reported, however I believe it was the same funnel reported 3 times.

As it turns out we could have probably seen the funnel from our living room window. Little close for comfort... First time I've ever seen a tornado warning in Santa Fe!

There are a couple of video's on YouTube (not mine)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cXbOYQswP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVNLP6RtyFg

 

[Jody Radzik]

Hey Tom.

I saw that landspout from my house as I was readying for my chase. I almost blew a gasket seeing it. What's kind of annoying is that everyone is reporting this to be a typical tornado rather than a landspout tornado. The storm was high-based. I imagine the updraft base was easily over 12,000 ft. Also, there was little structure under this storm in the way of a wall cloud. Finally, the landspout occurred very early in this storm's life. I was thinking of heading over to Chama to catch a storm near Cuba. The La Bajada cell was just a speck at that time. A few minutes later I rechecked the radar and saw it had grown significantly and was a nice discrete cell, so I decided to chase that. I stopped to nowcast a bit for Bob Schaefer, and went I looked out my bedroom window at the La Bajada cell, it has sucked up that landspout, which was visible from 30 miles away.

 

[Doug Raflik]

Chased with Brian Morganti today. We decided to play around the always pretty Raton Mesa in NE NM. It seemed all of eastern NM had equal chances of seeing storms, so we targeted the area that would look the best in our pictures. As we drove west on US 56, a line of storms went up on the higher terrain to or west, with the southern most extent of the line being sw of Springer. It was at least an hours drive away but we went after it. It pulsed a couple of times, but just a couple of miles SW of Springer, and right as we neared the storm, it began to take on some super cellular appearances. Though high based, rotation was very evident. The storm lasted a total of 5 hours, before convection started going up EVERYWHERE and we called it quits. We raced back to Amarillo in hopes for a lightning show after dark, but the line of storms decreased in intensity and I just went to bed.

Here is a picture of the storm SW of Springer with some Tempest Tours guests watching it...

Doug Raflik
[email protected]
http://www.dougraflikphotography.com