I was on the road from Santa Fe by 10:30 after gassing up, and by the time I was off I-25 and onto US 56 headed for Clayton, I could see an area of agitated cumulus to my northeast. By the time I was about halfway from Springer to Clayton (around 1:30), I was due south or a little southeast of this area, so I decided to cut north to Grenville. The chase was on! By the time I got to Grenville, there were storms breaking out northwest of there. I stairstepped north and east from there on back roads, being sure to keep well ahead of the storms so I would not end up on a muddy road, since all of the roads in that area were unpaved. There were multiple storms from the start, but after a while one northwest and eventually north of Des Moines became dominant and got SVR-warned, twice, as the cluster of storms gradually intensified and drifted, slowly at first, to the east, and also became somewhat more linear. At times the dominant storm displayed pretty good structure, including some broad-scale cloud-base rotation, but it was already part of a larger MCS and could not become separated from the other nearby storms. Here are a couple pictures of the dominant cell during the time it was near its peak intensity:
At the time of the second picture, there was some broad-scale cloud base rotation, with the pinkish-shaded lowered area along the storm's leading edge moving to the right (N or NE) while the darker cloud base behind it moved to the left.
Although it never became entirely separate from nearby storms, this cell did at times display some fairly impressive structure and lightning, along with the aforementioned broad-based cloud base rotation:
Eventually the whole thing evolved into a bow-echo, very outflow dominant, that surged southeast into the TX Panhandle. Per NWS local storm reports, the storm during its relatively early stages around 3:30, while I was on it, did produce copious 1-inch hail that destroyed a tomato patch 9 miles ENE of Folsom, NM, which would place it north or northeast of Des Moines. Once the storm had made the evolution into a bow-echo, the reflectivity images on radar were notably less pronounced, indicating less heavy precipitation. However, the storm was producing pretty strong outflow winds, and later became SVR-warned as its outflow surged ahead of the precipitation southeastward into the Texas Panhandle. More on that later.
Meanwhile, I saw by around 5, when I had gone east and eventaully south ahead of these storms and arrived in Clayton, that several storms, somewhat more isolated and with stronger radar retirms, had gone up to my south in the area around Tucumcari and Logan, while as noted the radar returns were decreasing on the storms northwest of Clayton. More storms were farther south than the Tucumcari/Logan ones, and eventually hit Clovis with wind and hail for the third or fourth consecutive night. I thought I might be able to intercept the Tucumcari/Logan storms in daylight, since I wos about an hour north of Nara Visa, wich is perhaps 30 miles NE of Logan on U.S. 54. As I headed south, I noticed that the storm on the SW end of the MCS I had been chasing was becoming stronger, and seemed more reachable. So I gave up on the Logan storms and headed west toward Mosquero, with the intensifying tail-end storm north of there. It took on supercellular characteristics as it separated from the rest of the MCS and seemingly rode the MCS outflow boundary to the SE. It had a hook echo and at times a velocity couplet on radar, and as I watched it accelerated southeast past Mosquero and became SVR-warned twice. Both warnings indluded Nara Visa, and the second extended to the TX state line in the US 54 area. Here are a couple pictures of this storm, the first as it was passing east of Mosquero and the second as it got closer to Nara Visa:
Meanwhile, back to my east, a large dust storm - sure looked like a haboob - surged along the outflow boundary ahead of the bow echo into TX. The strongest wind was well ahead of the rain, and with that area being pretty dry, it was able to kick up a lot of dust. Wish I had been in position to get pictures of that coming straight at me, as I have never gotten a picture like that of a haboob - definitely on my bucket list! But despite my not being in that position, this dust storm was pretty impressive even from my viewing angle to its west. After I ended the chase, this continued to surge southeast and produced measured winds in excess of 60 mph at a couple locations along US 54, including near Dalhart. Here is my picture of this dust storm, looking east into the TX Panhandle from a few miles NW of Amistad, NM on NM route 402:
You can see in this picture that the dust is being lofted high into the sky, and that the blowing dust along the gust front extends far to the northeast, crossing much of the northwest part of the Texas Panhandle. This picture is probably my favorite one from this chase, since it is a bit different than things I have documented on past chases, even though I have photographed some pretty intense dust storms. I also got some video I like of this dust storm/haboob:
Total chase distance for the day - 350 miles.
Total mileage for this chase trip: 882 miles.