High Plains Drifter

Departing for Chase Trip #1:  First stop — New Mexico

As mentioned in the previous blog post, I will be heading to New Mexico this morning.  The plan is to photograph showers/isolated thunderstorm rolling off the southern Sangre de Cristos with the emphasis on “golden hour” light/colors of landscape and convective elements in the sky.  Target is Las Vegas, NM by early to mid afternoon for lunch, then following the good light, color, landscape and sky after that!  Probably ending up around Santa Rosa or thereabouts by early evening.

Coming up:
Sunday is a down day and I will drive east into West Texas… staying in either Lubbock or Abilene.  Monday appers to be a chase day as there are decent signals for an isolated chaseable storm at the nose of the hot air ahead of an advancing cold front along the I-20 corridor in North Texas.  Tuesday and Wednesday look like down days, too, and I may do some sightseeing/landscape photography… but not sure where yet.  The pattern becomes active again by Thursday.

Heading to New Mexico instead.

I decided against chasing storms in the “cold pool” of this storm.  The mid level cyclone will be weakening as well as the surface circulation.  There will likely be a lot of mid level moisture wrapping around near the center of the decaying system anyway.  Too many negatives.  That being said, there could be an interest 2-3 hour period early in the afternoon, perhaps, across eastern Kansas near what’s left of the surface circulation, but I’m still most likely not going to pursue this.  Instead, I plan to leave early in the morning tomorrow and set sail for New Mexico.  The reason is simple:  I love New Mexico, even if there aren’t any storms.  Even mountain showers rolling off the southern end of the Sangre de Cristos early in the evening can provide artistic photography opportunities in New Mexico — and this is exactly what I’m going to attempt… some “golden hour” early-mid evening sky/landscape photography somewhere just off the Sangres along or southeast of I-25.  Models have been persistent in generated convective QPF amidst admittedly paltry CAPE (200-400 J/kg), but that’s okay.  It’s New Mexico, and I love this state.  Beats hanging around Dodge on Annual Leave, that’s for sure

First day of vacation appears to be a chase day… in Iowa of all places… followed by a few down days.

I am considering chasing the “cold core” setup in western Iowa on Saturday, April 24th for the first day of my early chase vacation.  I will likely leave Dodge City after work this evening and stay along I-80 somewhere (Lincoln, York, etc.).  Mid 50s dewpoints are expected to hang back near occluded surface low beneath mid level cold pocket aloft, and forecast CAPE of 1500+ J/kg is expected.  It will likely be an early show, which is why it will be imperative for me to depart early Saturday morning from where I stage overnight.  Sunday I will likely drive back to Dodge City, the way it appears now… do some last-minute chores around the house and finish full packing for a potential long period away from the house.  It all depends on the weather/chasing pattern though.  There will likely be at least a couple decent chase days mid to late next week as another significant storm system comes out onto the western Plains (Apr 28-29th or so).