Day Three Of Our Local Chase Adventures.

Small Ragged Wall Cloud 30 Miles West-Northwest Of Artesia.

Zoomed In A Little Closer. Rain Foot To The Right Or North.

Wall Cloud Becoming Blocky Looking & Becoming Rain Wrapped.

T-Storm Outflow Winds Kicking Up Blowing Dust North Of Artesia.

Looking South Along US Hwy 285 North Of Artesia Near The County Line.

Looking North Along US Hwy 285 North Of Artesia Near The County Line.

Cumulonimbus Mamatus Clouds East Of Carlsbad - Shot From C-Hill.

Day three of our storm chase adventures was just as much fun as the two previous days, although my wife didn't get to see a tornado. We left Carlsbad and headed north towards Roswell yesterday afternoon. Radar was already painting a nasty supercell thunderstorm south of US 70 near Sunset, in Lincoln County, that was moving off to the northeast. By the time we got to Artesia it had become a right mover, and had started turning to the east and eventually southeast. I decided to pull over on the Chaves/Eddy County Line and wait for this one to come to us since there were no good roads to take to this storm. We watched it until it got within about 15 miles of Artesia and then took a turn more to the east and moved across the Lake Arthur area.

Lots of mid-level rotation was observed on GRLevel3_2.00 with this storm. I remember seeing 116 knots of LLDV at one time which had a depth of around 24,000'. The largest hail icon I saw on radar was 2". Although we were never in the hail core and didn't see any hail from this storm. What we did see were a couple of small ragged wall clouds that had a hard time remaining persistent. They would come and go and never really maintain themselves for very long. Small scud clouds occasionally would get sucked up into the wall clouds and the rain free base. Only one wall cloud showed any signs of trying to rotate and that was very brief and it then became rain wrapped. A persistent rain foot was observed that lasted well over an hour.

A thunderstorm wind gust of 64 mph was measured at the 8 Mile Draw Raws at 4:37 PM MDT, which is located 14 miles north of the Bitter Lakes Wildlife Refuge.

Eventually the storm begin to weaken as its inflow was cutoff by thunderstorms to its south which were southwest-west of Artesia. So we headed back south towards Cottonwood where we encountered the outflow winds and blowing dust from these thunderstorms. At times the visibility dropped down to 1/4 to 1/2 of a mile in the blowing dust.

As we came into Artesia on our way back south to Carlsbad we hit some light to moderate rain, and it picked up to heavy at times until we reached Seven Rivers. It was good to see standing water in some of the pastures and a foot of water in the bar ditches. The rain pretty much ended after we got back home so after a quick bite to eat at Danny's we went up to C-Hill where I shot the photos of the Mamatus clouds.

A line of thunderstorms eventually formed from northeast of Artesia to southwest of Carlsbad and marched off to the east. There were several reports of straight line wind gusts of 60 mph, downed power lines in Lea County, as well as a tank battery fire.

The Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction!

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