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May 21 - Chasin' in the Mountains

Hello from Roswell, New Mexico!

Here's to new experiences... We started the morning off in Amarillo, TX and made our way south and west toward areas west of Roswell, NM. Of course, I was a little (a lot) excited about all the alien stuff! Though, we're here to chase storms so most of my "encounters" were while in a moving vehicle though maybe we'll have more encounters tonight.

We headed west out of Roswell toward Ruidoso along the 70. Once you get west of Roswell, all of a sudden, mountains (toward the Sierra Blanca). They are beautiful but horrible to chase. We wound into the mountains until we reached Ruidoso where a local gave us a tip on a great lookout from one of the mountain tops. We climbed our way up the mountain toward the lookout where we had a great view to the north. We sat there for hours watching towers go up, drop some small hail on us, then pass. We also saw an elk... 

Things started to look like they weren't going to come together so we decided to head back toward Roswell where we'd be spending the night. We got back to Roswell, put our names in at a restaurant for a table, when Matt looked at the radar and said, "Uh, there's a good looking storm right where we were!" After some deliberation, we decided to head back to where we came from to see the storm. 

As we approached, it looked okay but not super impressive. Instead of continuing on the 70 toward Ruidoso, we broke off on the 380. We rounded the bend and there was the storm producing a wall cloud! We had a great view of the wall cloud between two mountain peaks but had to readjust as it moved behind a mountain peak. We repositioned and watch the wall cloud for a while. It was certainly trying but couldn't get it together. 

We decided to head back east toward Roswell but stop partway to do some lightning photography. We were treated to a great lightning show and even another wall cloud as the storm tried again! All-in-all, we got to have a new experience chasing in the mountains (not recommended) and got some great lightning shots out of it.

We're trying to decide our move for tomorrow. This area could be active again, or a bit farther north, but then we need to haul all the way up to the Colorado/Nebraska border.