Supercells with hail in New Mexico

Chase Recap:

David Drummond and myself left in the early afternoon for an intial target of around Carlsbad, New Mexico. As we were nearing Carlsbad, a storm popped along the mountains west of Roswell, NM.

We raced up to Roswell, and sat just west of town and watched the beautiful structure as it moved east at a very slow pace. We ended up going north of Roswell, where we ran into Warren Faidley for a bit before punching further north. We came across hail, mostly dime and nickel sized. We had a couple pieces up to 1.25″ and measured 1.25″.

After the storm crossed US285, it started dying out, so we headed south for the cell south of Carlsbad. It was tornado warned, but took us awhile to get down there. Once we did, we started to punch east on a road that appeared to be paved, and was paved for a few miles. There were some long-horned cows out on the road, which we had to navigate through. We got to a point in the road where it became caliche and was washed out, so we had to do some delicate maneuvering to get back, going by the cows again.

We shot south into Texas and then Northeast towards Jal, NM where we observed multiple wall clouds and multiple funnels along with David getting some excellent lightning strikes.

All in all, it was a great chase, and was great to be out in the middle of nowhere enjoying a beautiful storm.