High-Based Convection near Santa Fe, NM, May 21, 2009

by John Farley

Since I had just arrived in Santa Fe a couple days earlier and was bored by the general lack of interesting storms this spring, I decided to head out and photograph some high-based convection that was occurring around the Santa Fe area. A band of cells was drifting northwestward over the Santa Fe area, so I headed out and worked my way southeast to try to find the tail-end cell. I drove up into the sandhills east of El Dorado, and did find the tail-end cell, but it was evident that it was quite weak and disorganized. So, I decided to head back north of town, as it appeared that activity up that way was intensifying. When I got to Camel Rock, I noticed some rising scud under the updraft of a cell to my north that was likely up somewhere near Espanola:

Soon the rising scud consolidated into this lowering:

Although it was under an updraft and had something of a wall cloud look to it, I think a "scud bomb" would be a better characterization, as the convection remained weak and high-based, as can be seen in this picture, taken from near the Buffalo Thunder Resort, a few miles north, 5 or 10 minutes later. Also, there was little or no thunder and lighting with this activity, even though it was obviously convective in nature.

While I was at Camel Rock, the convection to my southeast that I had initially been viewing seemed to pulse up a bit as it moved over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains:

I was also able to get kind of an artsy picture of the convection in the background with Camel Rock in the foreground. All in all, nothing too exciting, but it was nice to get out and look at weather of some kind!

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