Mammatus in New Mexico

JUNE 1 DAY 6

The day started off beautifully. It wasn’t too hot or too cold. The atmosphere seemed to be a little capped today. We left Oakley, KS and headed west into Colorado near the New Mexico stateline.

Finally around 1 pm CST, a cumulus field was beginning to develop. Shortly after 2 pm MST, we went west towards La Junta. There were some storms starting to form to the south just slightly west of Raton, New Mexico. Off in the distance, I could see the storms and a couple anvils. We continued southwest towards Trinidad. The atmosphere was slowing becoming more unstable. The cells were growing and were stationary. A cumulus field could be seen ahead of the cells.

Around 4:50, a small supercell formed west of Raton, New Mexico. We decided to continue south west to target this storm. The scenery around here was amazing. We could see the mountains and rolling hills, with the supercell ahead of us. We saw a beaver tail trying to attach to the core of the storm. After a few minutes, the supercell started moving southwest, away from us. We went through Trinidad and the mountains were just beautiful. We continued south towards Raton. A flanking line was building and started to corkscrew in the updraft. We stopped in Raton at a Sonic to eat something. Just off to the west between some trees and mountains, I watched the LP supercell trying to organize its meso together, but it didn’t amount to much. We decided to head north of the interstate. Just outside of Trinidad, we saw some nice mammatus. On the way to Pueblo, Colorado, we saw a colourful sunset behind the mountains, with more cb’s forming. The scenery made for a pretty picture.

We stayed in Pueblo overnight and planned to head back to Nebraska the next day to get in position for the potential severe storm set up on Saturday.