High Plains Drifter

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Weak showers, virga, and rainbow put on a display near Vaughn, New Mexico

The forecast worked out perfectly for Day One.  My goal was to get photogenic New Mexico sky + landscape scenes from innocuous convective showers in an environment with prevailing northwest surface winds and CAPE of about 100 J/kg (LI around -1°C).  My target was Las Vegas, NM and south of there once showers moved off the mountains.  I arrived in Las Vegas, NM around 12:45pm MDT with some initial showers already forming just northwest of town.  After a quick lunch I drove south on Hwy 84 toward I-40, stopping a few times to photograph a few of the showers to my north.  I then continued southwest on Hwy 54 stopping a few more times along the way as the showers were increasing in coverage with more widespread virga and rain reaching the ground.  The dewpoint was in the lower 30s, so there was a lot of evaporation of the precipitation cores.  I reached Vaughn and drove a few miles southeast for another quick photo grab… then back to Vaughn to head south on Hwy 285, where I spent most of my time during this chase.  10 miles to the southeast of Vaughn, I found this ranch road called County Road 3G (per Tiger shape file readout).  This was a nice little road away from the main highway a little bit to do some work without the traffic distractions of the highway, which is a 4-lane highway all the way from Vaughn to Roswell.  More showers were developing off to the northwest, and as early evening was approaching, I was trying to figure out where the best opportunity to set up for “golden hour” light.  I thought I was going to have to head northwest quite a ways for fears that the convection would hover too close to the western horizon and limit lighting possibilities from the setting sun.

First I drove west on Hwy 60 about 12 miles or so, then I realized that this wasn’t probably the best move, so I retraced back to Hwy 54 (from Vaughn you can travel in 5 different directions) and drove southwest thinking this might be the best path to sunlight.  After about 8 miles driving on this highway, I began to reconsider this, too, for fears that the shower activity would be too far to the east without much convective virga/etc near me.  About the time I decided to turn back around for Vaughn again, a rainbow started to appear.  I photographed this rainbow as it waxed and waned periodically for a good half hour!  I followed the backside of one particular shower as I drove south-southeast on Hwy 285.  The rainbow was rather brilliant at times.  I made it back to the aforementioned county road 3G where I had most of my best images, especially just before 7:00pm MDT when a large evaporating precipitation core lit up brilliantly on the backside of one of the showers to my southeast.  A portion of the ever-persistent rainbow extended down from this virga shaft.  I was fortunate enough as well to find a nice windmill for a foreground subject right next to the ranch road.  I kept shooting for the better part of the next 40 minutes or so along this ranch road until the light finally faded.  I managed to get one last grasp of pink color, looking off to the distant east as I was driving south along Hwy 285.  All told, I probably stopped about 4 or 5 different times along Hwy 285 south of Vaughn during this chase… having to cross the 4-lane highway (which was sparsely traveled) in order to get to the east side of the road to set up and shoot.  This was a very fun shoot!!

Begin:  Dodge City, KS
End: Roswell, NM
Day One Mileage: 618 mi.
Trip Mileage: 618 mi.

23 images from this shoot: