5/15/2010 - Decaying LP in Southeast NM

Not much to speak of for Saturday. The slight risk across the TX area was very marginal, and we spent most of the day in Monahans, TX throwing Frisbee and football. Both Benton and myself bit it trying to jump over a fence in a Best Western parking lot, which illustrates that “down” chasing periods are indeed hazardous to your health. We were somewhat split on a chase target – we liked the area near the Davis Mountains as well as the Carlsbad region. Thus, we split the difference and waited and waited. The storms that fired of the Davis Mountains did not look impressive. Alternatively, a cell did fire well west of Artesia, NM and we were initially reluctant to head that way, but finally decided to go after it by about 6 pm. As we got closer and closer to the storm well northeast of Carlsbad, we could tell it was struggling. Indeed, the LP supercell base shriveled in a matter of minutes as we got close. We watched the cell dissipate in the setting sun and called it a day, heading to Hobbs, NM for the night.