Moments In Chasing (5) Wide Open Upslope

Chasing Storm Eastern New Mexico 2001

I pulled this photograph from some old prints I had in a shoe box a few weeks ago when cleaning house of some old slides and prints. This photograph was taken during my 2001 chase expedition in Tornado Alley, during one of our down days, on the way to setup for the next days target area. The image you see is in northeast New Mexico, somewhere along S.R. 64/87 I believe in Union County. It’s nothing but wide open plains and hills in this part of the state, and some of my favorite terrain when chasing storms.

We normally chase this part of the country when things are slow over the central Plains due to ridges and lack of moisture. We head west out of the normal chasing targets of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas during May and June to chase upslope severe storms in eastern New Mexico and Colorado. Upslope can be a lot of fun since your chasing in lower moisture levels, and when supercells that due develop along the front range, they can become beautiful low precipitation (LP) supercells, with crazy carved out vertical structures. With the wide open lands and a well structured LP supercell, it will defiantly take your breathe away.

I love to drive through this area just to feel like I’m just a dot on the landscape. It’s so open you can see for dozens of miles in almost every direction. When you stop, there is little to hear beside the winds rolling over the open grasslands. Even if I don’t come across a storm at all that day, I come away satisfied just for being in such a place. It’s a huge difference in terrain for me, since I grew up and still live in the tropical sunny state of Florida, were the only open lands are the sugar cane and cattle fields. I love the tropics, and always will, but sometimes you just need a completely different view, smell and atmosphere.

That’s one of many awesome things about storm chasing across the nation each spring. You come across landscapes, towns, people and encounters you normally never see. It adds so much to the experience of being on the road sometimes 14 hours a day, and some three weeks covering 13,000 miles. Oh Yeah!

I never did encountered any “good” storms the next day due to lack of upper-level wind support, but I sure did go through several rolls of film trying to capture scenes many never see.

Don’t chase storms? That’s ok, but go travel anyways and see the “rest” of your country.