Normally, looking down the forward-flank core region toward a supercell isn’t the ideal vantage. In many ways, it wasn’t here either. I had busted with a figuratively dice-tossing, conditional forecast along the Raton Mesa this day, then went after this southeastward-moving supercell late, leaving me distant. I didn’t have a “clean” approach available, through an area with few paved roads, that would prevent getting “cut off” on escape options and permit a reliable and relatively safe drive back to my lodging in Boise City. So I had to remain content with passive viewing from afar, which yielded surprisingly good results over the span of about an hour at this location. The last of those results may have been the best: this blast of forked “crawler” lightning under the storm’s mammatus-festooned near-side anvil, which for just a few minutes, filtered through some great coloring likely being splashed across its unseen upper reaches by the sunset.
4 NW Pritchett CO (8 Jul 23) Looking WSW
37.4258, -102.8926