This was not only a weird scene, but one with a lot happening. As the “Roswell Mothership” storm shrunk a little and raised its cloud base, it still remained decidedly surface-based. We know this because it can be seen here at right, ingesting a plume of smoke from a grass fire that had been started by its own lightning. That, combined with some subtle differences in cloud shadowing, cast a darker tone to the storm than its even higher-based, more skeletal twin following behind (at left). The second supercell formed earlier than the one at right, trailed it by a greater distance for most of both storms’ lifespans, but caught up after becoming elevated over the leading storm’s outflow. The combination of a surface-based supercell, elevated twin, and smoke plume yielded a surreal event unique to my storm-observing experience, and not likely to be replicated.
11 N Roswell NM (7 Jun 14) Looking N
33.5585, -104.5252