High Plains Drifter

…Long-lived picturesque LP-ish supercell from northeast of Clayton, NM to northwest of Clovis, NM…

My target was Clayton, NM area, and I arrived there around Noon CDT eager to have some mexican food at the Eklund Saloon — only arriving to find out that the Eklund is closed… at least temporarily according to the signage on the doors.  Lets hope that it is just temporary.  Anyway, after a lunch at another restaurant, I drifted north of town to watch some cumulus development.  I was keying in on the area north of Clayton where the best surface convregence was.  I drove back into town to get some gas and noticed on SpotterNetwork that Roger Hill and Silver Lining Tours (SLT) was pulling into town.  I saw them pull into the Pizza Hut so I went in there to say hey to Roger briefly, then I was on my way again.  I went back to the same spot… a nice overlook on Hwy 370 north of Clayton by a few miles.  The first decent storm to develop went up east of me — to the southeast of Boise City, so I decided to at least hedge my bets east… keeping a close eye to my north still, which was where I was actually a little more interested based on surface obs.  Sure enough, as I begin driving out of Clayton on Hwy 56 to the northeast, an updraft began to explode to my north.  I wanted to watch this, so I peeled off Hwy 56 on a farm road in extreme southwest Cimarron County, OK between Felt, OK and Clayton, NM.  The new storm had a beautiful pancake anvil and after an initial split, began to really develop nicely into a formidable rotating soda can updraft!  I watched this thing drift south toward me, but eventually headed south to stay ahead of this.

Another storm was developing east of me…a storm between the one I was on looking north and the southeast of Boise City storm.  This had a beautiful updraft with long beaver tail on the north side and even a lowered feature beneath the base.   I continued south to Ranch 808 where I decided to head west.  In this mid-upper level flow environment, I usually do not want to be east of the storm at all… it’s better to be due south or southwest of the updraft area.  So I decided to head west into New Mexico to Hwy 402.  The drive along Hwy 402 was very nice with a great view of the backside broiling convection looking to the east-southeast at the supercell.  I finally made it to Nara Visa and Hwy 54 where I continued southwest.  I leap-frogged Roger Hill again along Hwy 54… the first time was up when the storm first developed east of Clayton.  I had lost data connection for some time while on Hwy 54 including going through Logan until I got closer to I-40.  As the storm approached I-40, it was looking very nice visually — perhaps the strongest the storm ever got was when it was northeast of San Jon on approach to I-40.  I continued south on Hwy 39 stopping a couple times to photograph the structure.  It had some very nice RFD occlusions, but the storm was high-based with no tornado threat (despite the one tornado warning Albequerque issued).  One of the stopping locations was atop San Jon Hill, which is where Roger Hill and SLT pulled up.  This was an excellent view overlooking some small canyon landscape carved out by one of the tributaries of the Canadian River — and the supercell storm approaching!  The structure, though by this time, was beginning to wane unfortunately.  Nevertheless, it was a beautiful spot to photograph a storm from, and it was nice to share this scene with Roger and his chase tour guests.

So I continued south on state routes as the storm was now moving more and more to the southwest with time.  It was starting to get dark, so I wanted to get closer to Clovis where my hotel reservation was.  I reached a point about 15 miles north of Clovis with the storm still to my northwest…wanting to get closer to the updraft one last time.  As I was doing so, about a mile into my west jog off of Hwy 209, the underbelly of the storm was illuminated a brilliant pink… as if a spotlight was shining on the storm from below.  This was extremely vivid, and I don’t recall seeing anything quite like this before.  I scrambled to get my D3 onto the tripod because I knew this color wasn’t going to last.  I got the shot!  It was an absolutely breathtaking scene.  The pink was just incredible on the weakening storm updraft to the west-northwest!!  I stayed there for a little while longer as some of the color lingered… and I had the D200 on the tripod now to photograph some lightning.  I managed to get a couple CG’s and one nice crawler.  What a way to finish off an amazing chase day!!  Below are 10 images from the chase: