Stephen's Adventures and Misadventures: May 23, 2014 Hope/Carlsbad, NM Supercells

We started the day in Trinidad, CO with an initial target of Roswell, NM. Given it was a bit of a haul, we woke up early and got on the road. Once we made it to Roswell, we really didn't know what to make of the situation. There was a storm getting going towards extreme SE New Mexico, but that cell was about two hours away and everything looked kind of "mushy" with the weak shear our area. We decided to stay patient and see if a few storms could get going off of the Sacramentos and Benson Ridge. Once we jogged west of Artesia, NM towards Hope, NM we got a decent look at the storm(s). They looked sloppy at first and really multicellular in nature. Remaining patient, we sat out there contemplating where to stay the night and whether or not we killed ANOTHER storm; however, things really started to get going at that point. We busted south to get a closer look at the southern cell and it seemed to be pulsing. The road network was really crap and we just had a gravel road east option. It was full of Arroyos and really not meant four our Chevy Cruze. After beating the car to hell (it's still in one piece, I think), we were able to stop a few times and grab some photos of cows and a nice looking supercell. The storm consistently became better and better, ultimately pushing us to the main highway, where we got ourselves into a bit of a pickle. The original supercell began to push its way north of us and a new classic supercell developed behind it. The big issue was a left-split that was thrown off of a storm to our south. It was screaming up right towards us. The problem was that we really didn't have a great escape option (from hail) given we had a supercell to our south, north, and west (and no roads east). Ultimately, we had to thread the needle by letting the big, hail producing, monster left-split pass just to our east and dropping south behind it as it merged with our old, dying, original supercell. As we ran south we came across a nice hail streak with dime to nickle size hail and flash flooding. We watched the convection, now merged together, move off as the sun came down and hail fog covered the ground. Overall, it was a crap-shoot kind of day where we just found ourselves in the right location by remaining patient and trusting our instincts. Ending up with three supercells (two classics (classic to low precipitation transition) and a left-split)), hail (not hitting us), hail fog, a decent lightning show, and cows makes for a good day. I'll take high-based supercells over a messy tornado producing monster with storm chaser convergence ANY DAY OF THE WEEK. Let's see if we can repeat today.

Walker Ashley's time lapse of the day