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storm gallery: May 5, 2008
May 5, 2008: I thought storms would fire farther east than they did on this day, near the New Mexico-Texas border. Instead, a cell west of Roswell, New Mexico - farther west than I'd hoped - sluggishly brewed as I tried hard to reach it. Once I did get in the area, it was picking up speed and heading northeast on a terrible road network.
Click on the thumbnails to see a larger image, or view these photos as a gallery. From the gallery pages, click the "up" arrow to return to this index.
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May 5, I targeted the western Texas panhandle, hoping storms would move there out of New Mexico. I ended up driving all the way to Roswell, New Mexico, to see this storm. |
The storm had nice layered features; if I had arrived a bit earlier, I would have had a better view of its nice shape. |
Lots of hailstones littered the sides of the road. Many were 2 inches in diameter. |
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Northeast of Roswell, very large hailstones littered the sides of the road, and I saw many vehicles with smashed windshields. Given the intensity of the storm as seen on radar and the stones I saw, I'm sure there were at least baseballs in the storm. |
Here are more hailstones from the storm. Remember, they'd been melting for several minutes, and there were lots of them. |
The storm that formed behind the hail-filled beast had a rotating wall cloud northeast of Roswell. |
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The storm that formed behind the hail-filled beast had a rotating wall cloud northeast of Roswell, with suggestive lowerings like this one. Was it a funnel? |
The secondary storm had an impressive white hail shaft. Knowing what its sister storm did, as soon as hail started falling on the road, I turned around and went the other way. I didn't want to be caught with no escape route. |
I drove east out of Roswell, the way I had come, and looked back toward the sunset and more storms forming to the west. |
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Again, the sunset and western storms, with a different exposure. |
Meanwhile, the beast - tracking east, to my north - was evolving into a mean cluster. |
Another sunset view. I love the colors in the clouds. |
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Further east of Roswell, I couldn't believe what a good view I got of the south end of the massive storm cluster (looking north in this shot). Bill Hark gave me a phone update to tell me what a nasty hail core it still had. |
Here's a similar shot, with lightning setting the precipitation aglow. |
A time exposure in near-darkness shows the shape of the southern component of the storm cluster. |
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In far eastern New Mexico, I stopped to get a few time exposures of the storm. Check out the layers. It was an ominous creature. |
2008 reports and photos
go to the main gallery page | go to storm chasers go to reports from 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997
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