June 28th was the final day of my 2011 storm chase trip with Jay
Antle. We departed Raton, NM late morning and made a leisurely drive
through the mesas east of Raton, including Johnson Mesa as well as a
trip to Capulin Volcano (always a favorite). We then took the scenic
drive along Highway 456 just south of the Colorado border... east to
Kenton. We transitioned into chase mode as we set sights on the
Springfield, CO area where we were conveniently greeted to the first
storm of the day with decent cloud-to-ground lightning (first image in
the sequence below). We followed these storms east toward Walsh and
continued on into far southwest Kansas when storms really started to
get their act together northwest of Richfield. A series of formidable
gustnadoes developed in front of us along one of the dirt roads we
were traveling along. We continued east on pavement along Hwy 27 and
eventually reaching Hwy 51. At that point, the storm evolved into a
series of high-based storms in a psuedo-linear fashion, but had nice,
organized updraft structure and a lot of blowing dust action beneath
(continued in Part 2...)
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