July 1, 2021 Two Strong Storms! Hugoton and La Junta are General Thundered

Start:  Perryton/lunch: Hugoton McDonalds/End:  La Junta/433 miles

Despite the bottom-of-the-barrel weather pattern, today we managed to observe a couple of reasonably good storms.  The first one went up shortly after we got out of Perryton late-morning.  We crossed the Oklahoma Panhandle and had strong convection just northwest of Hugoton.  This showed some low-level organization and perhaps a little wall cloud briefly.  It was barely past noon!  This storm looked pretty good on both radar and in person, though I am not sure if it was spitting out hail that was large enough to be severe.

As the storm headed southeastward to Hugoton, it diminished rapidly in intensity.  Back to Plan A, which was to try for some late-day storms on the High Plains of southeastern Colorado.

There was barely enough shear and instability west of Baca County for a strong storm.  We made our way from Springfield to Kim and then NNW to La Junta.  A decent, isolated and organized cell with laminar banding was a little west of town.  Again, this was a little better than what we expected!