Date: June 6, 2017
Time: 2:45 - 7:00 PM MDT
Place: Clines Corners to Roswell, NM
Distance: 415 mi (67 to target, 140 chasing, 208 to home)
Camera: T3i, GoPro3, GoPro5, Sony RX100ii
Warnings: SVR
Rating: S3

Pre-Chase

10:30 AM - 1:20 PM MDT: I'm always a little jealous when I read other chasers' storm reports and they start out with "I left work a little early today..." Given that Albuquerque is our home city, we're rarely in position for quick, half-day chases -- usually it's at least a full day or an overnight trip. But not today. For the 1st time in 6 years, I can say that I left work a little early for today's chase (technically, I barely even got in half a day's work).

Today's target is eastern New Mexico. A relatively unusual little "northwest flow" type event is setting up as mid-50s dewpoints (good for this elevation) are in place on the eastern NM plains underneath 40 kts of 500mb flow from the NW. Storms will initiate off the mountains near Santa Fe to Raton and track SSE into a decently moist, sheared environment for supercell structures and maybe a landspout if we're lucky.

I left work about 1:10 and rendezvoused with Toni at the movie theater parking lot on the east side of town. A nice cell had already initiated off the Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of Bernal and was heading south. If we made good time east on I-40, we could intercept within the hour!

The Chase

1:20 - 2:50 PM MDT: Cruising east out of the Sandia mountains, it was only 10 minutes before the plains opened up in front of us and we could see our distant thunderstorm tower another 45 miles further ENE. At 1:23, the storm went SVR warned. On radar, it had a definite supercellular appearance with an updraft region on its southwestern flank. Getting closer, we noticed that the entire several-mile-wide updraft tower was topped with a huge pileus cap -- something I've never seen before at that scale.

Road options are incredibly sparse in this part of New Mexico, but fortunately the storm was sinking south right along Hwy 3. We arrived at the Hwy 3 exit just as the storm was crossing I-40 -- rain curtains just another mile to the east. Dropping south a couple miles on 3, we set up with a good view on the entire updraft region. The high, blue base and glinting rain shafts were a beautiful sight juxtaposed against the scrubby green pinyon and junipers. But the lack of lowerings or interesting motion reminded us that classic mesocyclonic tornadoes were pretty unlikely today.

2:50 - 4:25 PM MDT: The lack of road network finally started to bite us as the storm core pulled away to the southeast. We had some driving to do in order to get back into good position. Over the next half hour, we dropped south on Hwy 3 to the classic ghost town of Encino and then east on 285 through Vaughn -- right into the leading edge of the core complete with a nice barrage of close lightning. Despite the lightning, structure was really starting to fall apart and gust out.

We took Hwy 285 SE out of Vaughn, now ahead of a broken line of unwarned storms. I put about 30 miles between us and the precipitation in hopes of getting a nice structure timelapse as the storms rumbled towards us. This is one of the starkest, flattest areas in all New Mexico, so I loved setting my slide rail out next to a cholla cactus and lapsing as the storms moved in. It's almost unnerving that you can set your camera 6 inches above the dirt and still see all the way to the horizon - it's that flat.

Cloud bases took on a pretty, scalloped look as new updrafts and rain shafts developed and the broken line of storms congealed into a very weak MCS. Some distant dust kicked up and I was on the lookout for a diamond-in-the-rough landspout, but no such luck. We let the outflow gust front crash over us before continuing SE towards Roswell - struggling to pinpoint a new chase target amongst the weak storms.

4:25 - 6:30 PM MDT: That face when your storms gust out but you can't even get a decent shelf cloud.

By the time we arrived in Roswell, the arc of weak cells to our northwest had entered pop-up-gust-out-pop-up mode as they rumbled towards us. On the east side of town, we drove through an orchard and heard what sounded like a gunshot coming out of the trees. I was still in chase mode trying to find a vantage point for one last timelapse, so I didn't think much of it at the time.

We shot a few more pictures and timelapse as the gust front passed over Roswell (even saw a couple gustnadoes) before deciding we'd seen all there was to see. Heading back into town, we passed through the orchard again and once again heard a gunshot in the trees by the road. This time I was paying attention. We crept a little further down the road and pulled off to listen. Sure enough -- BAM -- another shot. But after the shot, there was a ghostly whistle rising from above the shot's location. Hearing this a few more times, I finally realized we were sitting beside a hail cannon hidden in the trees nearby trying to protect the orchard. The eerie whistle after each shot was a vortex ring blasting from the canon after each shot. Check out the short video on the right to hear that really cool (if ineffective) sound.

Post-Chase

6:30 - 11:00 PM MDT: RibCrib is officially the 2017 MVP of bust chase meals. A new location had just been built on the north side of Roswell, so we enjoyed some delicious pulled pork and brisket as deep orange post-storm sunlight filtered through the windows. A beautiful mammatus display lit the desolate highway as we started the trek back to ABQ. Along the way, I had to stop a couple times at some abandoned buildings just to soak in the desolate twilight. Notably, no UFOs were observed but I did fly the drone once for some sunset shots. After an uneventful drive, we arrived back home by 11PM. At 10 hours and 40 minutes, this was our shortest chase to date!

Recap, Filmmaking Notes, and Lessons Learned