A massive wildfire continued to burn out of control and was 0%
contained along the Arizona-New Mexico border. This fire spread a
substantial smoke plume northeast in the prevailing mid and upper
level wind flow toward western Kansas on June 7th. The dense mid and
high level smoke nearly completely blocked out the sun for a short
time period during the afternoon in Dodge City with shadows only
barely discernible. Visibility was reduced to 3 miles at one point
during the afternoon in Dodge City and Garden City. By late afternoon
and evening, the thickest of the smoke moved east toward central
Kansas, but a new wildfire emerged in Las Animas County, Colorado,
likely spawned by a dry thunderstorm from the day before. This fire
sent a thick plume of smoke toward far west-central and southwest
Kansas around sunset. Meanwhile, the massive "Wallow Fire" along the
Arizona-New Mexico border had sent another huge plume of smoke
northeast through central and northern New Mexico, which will no doubt
reach southwest Kansas overnight tonight and into the day on Wednesday
(June 8th). I decided to photograph the setting sun in this unusual
smoky sky. The sunset was rather amazing with no other clouds around.
The red, magenta, and orange color right at sunset where the sun was
setting was rather intense. I found a farmstead to use as a
foreground subject for this shoot about 10 miles north of Dodge City.
My storm chasing target on June 1st was near the Colorado-Kansas
border. I set off for the Elkhart area initially, but when I arrived
at Rolla, I decided to head due west via county roads as storms
developing over the Raton Mesa were beginning to move northeast toward
southeastern Las Animas County and into western Baca County. I
figured that these storms would continue to roll off the mesas and
mature as they neared the Pritchett and eventually Springfield areas.
I finally arrived to Hwy 287 near Campo. The initial storms that
moved out of the mesas weakened, but there was new storm development
back farther southwest into the mesas again -- really too far for me
to try to intercept. To make matters worse, the storms were
organizing rapidly and not moving. They were still a good hour to
hour and a half intercept through the mesas to reach them. It was
either that or just try to be patient and let them come to me. Well,
as this was happening, severe storms were developing rapidly off to my
northwest. These storms were an easier intercept for me, so I decided
to head north for an intercept. As I approached Lamar, there was a
downtrend in strength occurring with these storms. I went west on a
county road about a mile or so and monitored one of the dying storms
to my northwest (image shown below). It didn't take long to realize
that this area of storms were toast. Frustrated, I went into Lamar
and stopped at the Wal-Mart to pick up a 8GB compact flash card since
I left two of my high storage cards at home (whoops!).
When I came out of the Wal-Mart, the storms to my south were
organizing into a decent cluster of severe storms as they were exiting
the mesas and heading into Baca County. Well, instead of going after
those, a new storm was rapidly forming back to the west of Lamar again
near La Junta. Obviously, this was a much easier intercept, and I
liked the fact it was more discrete than the storms farther south --
offering perhaps a better photography opportunity. Well, I went
west...and once again...upon my arrival the storm absolutely died a
horrible death. So now, I was really out of position to get back to
the south to intercept the now ongoing severe cluster in Baca County.
This was extremely frustrating. Every decision I was making seemed to
be the wrong one. I pretty much gave up at this point and started my
drive back to Dodge City empty-handed. (continued in Part 2...)
