5/16/2010 – Denver City Supercell

Once again, the day featured two choices … the Davis Mountains of Texas or southeast New Mexico. Since we woke in Hobbs, we were a bit reluctant to go screaming south to the Davis Mountains target. So, we waited around Hobbs, throwing ball in a town park – complete with video surveillance (I assume they may have a gang problem in Hobbs). In the early afternoon, a storm went up along the Guadalupe Mountains, near Carlsbad Caverns. We took off after it and “punched” the fizzling core just southeast of the National Park. After this defeat, we loaded up on burgers, drinks, ice cream, and poppers at Sonic happy hour. As we waited in Carlsbad, we became quite concerned about the mixing going on along the Carlsbad and Artesia area. Dew points were dropping like a rock with a nice cu field off to our east. We decided to head toward the Hobbs region, continually watching the cu field and struggling convection off to our north. As we crossed into Texas east of Hobbs, we slid north toward a couple of small, non-severe cells near Tatum, NM. We drove up to Denver City and watched the southern cell slowly strengthen, acquire a nice hail core, and go t-storm warned. The storm matured into one of the more picturesque, slow-moving supercells I’ve seen in a couple years. The biggest joy of this was the fact that there were no chasers on this event until very late in the evening, meaning we had the storm to ourselves – a rare treat these days. Nothing more to say – the supercell was just spectacular to watch and reaffirmed my feelings that a nice, relaxing supercell can be better than an adrenalin-filled tornado situation. We watched the supercell transition from classic to LP and shrivel in front of us during twilight. What a treat … and a great way to close Trip 1.

Gif animation of stills illustrating shriveling LP.

Time-lapse for the day.