Supercell Thunderstorm W of Roswell! (June 1, 2019)

Yesterday I had an encounter with a supercell thunderstorm in SE New Mexico west of Roswell. This Supercell formed in a pretty meager environment, but it really got its act together as it moved out onto the Plains. A left-split interacted with this supercell, resulting in a short-term favorable storm interaction and a possible tornado. Shortly after this interaction, the supercell was ingesting cold, outflow air from the left-spit and died.

Watching initial storm development in the Hondo Valley. Initially storms were rather disorganized owing to the slightly lower instability and weaker wind shear. However, this wouldn’t last long.

Eventually the storm acquired supercell characteristics in the Hondo Valley. This began with the base widening and then a wall cloud forming in short order. At this moment, this cell is warned for golfball size hail.

The supercell preparing to exit the Hondo Valley and is looking organized still. The storm interaction had yet to begin but wasn’t far away.

The storm interaction is now underway with the base lowering. Shortly after this picture we had a near/possible tornado as the wall cloud was literally just 100 feet or so off of the ground with scud rotating and rising rapidly into it.

Solid Day of Photos

Overall the supercell aspect of the day went almost as good as could be expected. I had committed to going back to Albuquerque and decided against going south for more LP supercells (not sure if this was a good or bad decision still) and I ended up shooting some cool scenes across C NM into the dusk hour. I’ll certainly share those at some point soon!