Chase: Thursday, May 22, 2014

The morning briefing was held bright and early at 7:30 am. We decided on our target city as Clovis, New Mexico. On our way down, storms started firing around 1:30 pm. We stopped in Clayton, NM for a quick update and decided to follow a storm starting to develop to our northwest and we stopped to see the development of mammatus clouds from the passing storm. Storms started to develop to our south so we changed direction and moved southeast towards Dalhart, Texas. Upon arrival at Dalhart, another update led us to travel further south and ended up stopping to watch the storm move in and take some photos. There was some great lightning that a few of us were able to capture. We also got to experience the storm’s outflow that carried a significant amount of tumbleweeds in our pathway. We continued south east following the storm through Channing, Texas. At that point, we decided to abandon the chase as the storms moved out. We ended the day in Portales, New Mexico. We’re in a good location for tomorrow’s storms.

Storms northwest of Clayton, New Mexico. Photo by Kristen Anderson.

Mammatus clouds near Clayton, New Mexico. Photo by Kristen Anderson.

Tyler Tomaszewski with a lightning strike in the background. Video Capture by Matt Schmit.