By 5:35, I was on route 104 heading east from Las Vegas with the storm in front of me, so about an hour as I had expected. By now, the storm had crossed I-25 after straddling it for quite a while, and was probably 25-30 miles NE of Las Vegas, continuing to drift southeast and still north of route 104. And it still appeared impressive, though high-based, with periodic overshooting tops. Here is a view of it from just east of Las Vegas:
I continued east perhaps 20 miles on route 104 to get closer to the storm. Around that point, I stopped to watch it, but noticed that at least a portion of the storms to the south were surging northward closer to my location - definite left-movers relative to the isolated storm I was on. Radar verified this, and showed that the most intense storm was now in the northeastward-surging cluster. At the northeast end of that cluster, and due south of me, the newest storm had just gone up and looked to be intensifying. Here is a view of the early stages of that storm, looking south:
Eastward for a ways from this new cell, there was a very hard updraft base as more storms seemed to be going up between this new cell and others farther east in this cluster. I was hearing occasional low rumbles of thunder, but with a gusty wind blowing from the south or southwest, it was at times hard to tell what was wind and what was thunder, as well as to tell whether it was coming from the original storm I had been chasing that was to my NE or from the cluster to my south and southeast. At first, looking at the storm in the picture above, I really thought it was a left split from the storms to my south, and it may have been. There was some movement in diffrerent directions in the base of the new cell, but it was hard to tell whether any possible rotation there was cyclonic or anti-cyclonic, as would be the case with a true left split. There were still plenty of storms south of I-40, but this cell was surging rapidly toward my location. On further thought, although one or more of the storms may have been a left split, they might also have been simply new storms that went up on northeastward-surging outflow from the storms south of I-40, Even so, they were clearly moving faster and in a different direction (to the northeast or even NNE) than my original storm, which continued to drift slowly to the southeast. From radar, it was clear that it was a matter of time until the southen cluster of storms and the original one would merge. It looked like my location might be in the path of the storm to my south, so I backed off a couple miles to the west to avoid getting in any hail.
Before long, the storm approaching from the south intensified and put down some sunlit precipitation shafts, leading to a rainbow:
Shortly after this, the storm went SVR-warned for 60 mph wind and 1-inch hail, with later updates increasing the expected hail size to half-dollar size as the storm neared route 104 to my east and continued to intensify. Even with my phone, which can shoot a wider-angle shot that the lens I had on my camera, you could not get the entire storm in one frame, but I was able to make this 2-shot panorama and get the whole storm in a picture:
After a while longer, this storm crossed route 104 and merged into the original storm that had been moving southeast. Since I wanted to get back to Santa Fe before dark, I knew it was about time to call the chase, but I got one more view of the storms around the time of the merger:
Not a bad little chase for storms it only took a little over an hour to drive to!
Total chase distance: About 165 miles.