Our chase day on 8/9/13 began in Vega, TX, and my target area was to the west in NM, somewhere around Vaughn. My motto for chasing in NM is “When in doubt, go to Vaughn.” Our first stop after our nutritious late breakfast in Vega was at Cuervo, NM. Interstate 40 was laid down right through the middle of Cuervo back in the 1960s, as children played in the streets and the ice cream man played his happy and loud melody. Today, Cuervo is a ghost town.
A storm formed southwest of Santa Rosa, and it left a swath of hail near Corona. We stayed with it to the east of Corona a little, but it became tiresome. New stuff formed to our northwest, and we found ourselves near a dusty and outflowy cell north of Willard — not the rat — the town in NM. This storm moved east along Highway 60 and helped to kick off new storm cells along the way. We wound up east of Vaughn at dusk, with occasional lightning in several directions, and eventually a stunning display of the Milky Way above an active cumulonimbus cloud. New Mexico is the bomb.
ohman says
Nice work! Milky Way and Lightning!