Like many old Great Plains homesteads, the main dwelling here slowly decays away, a relic of a time when opportunity and promise of the good times and wetter years hit the harsh reality of dry-land agriculture in this drought-prone, windswept, volcano-studded corner of New Mexico. In the distance, Palo Blanco Mountain and adjoining highlands stand watch. Storms like this, and the cold winter … [Read more...]
Sunset through Outflow
The final "non-monsoon" chase of the 2019 season for me ended like this: a wondrously textured, south-southeastward-moving complex of outflow-surfing thunderstorms, layered with laminar and convective elements, atop a high and undulating base, fresh outflow rushing forth in a soothing wind song. The idea of Tucumcari in July is a hot one; however, on this evening, a cool and moist breeze kept … [Read more...]
Sanctuary from the Storm
In troubled times, we seek sanctuary from the storms of life. Many of us choose to do so in the God who inspired this church. Completed in 1897 with stone taken from the flanks of the High Plains mesa on which it stands, the St. Johns Methodist Episcopal Church stands today as a well-maintained legacy of worship, reverentially restored several times, while enduring countless hundreds of similar … [Read more...]
Summer Storm over Johnson Mesa
A high-based, multicell thunderstorm, spawned off the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (distant right horizon) casts its broad shadow across Johnson Mesa in extreme northern New Mexico. At over 8,000 feet in elevation, this very high piece of High Plains formed when lava filled the valley of an ancestral version of the Cimarron River (now to its north and east), then the softer surrounding bedrock … [Read more...]
Deceptive Dust Devil
From the title, you've already surmised that this isn't a "landspout" tornado. Still, without good observational context, or advanced notice in the form of a web-page title, one might see the apparent superposition of a rotating dust column with convective cloud bases and background, and mistake this for one. Instead, the dust devil spun across the high desert of southeastern Arizona a few miles … [Read more...]
Deeply Occluded Tornadic Mesocyclone
The final minute of the 2019 Tipton, KS tornado found it still robust, but nearly completely shed from the rest of the storm in a common process. Within less than another few clicks of the camera shutter, the tornado was gone—not in a more-typical rope-out, but instead, simply vanished. The condensation disappeared in seconds, and the remaining dust settled irrotationally. That was an unusual … [Read more...]
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