Storm Chase - Northern Arizona || 5, 6, 10 August 2016

A few days in early August gave me opportunities to intercept monsoon thunderstorms along the Mogollon Rim Convergence Zone during southwest flow. The 5th, 6th and 10th of the month served up some nice ones. I’m not getting too detailed with these, or else I’ll never get around to posting the pics.

5 August

Around noon, I followed a strong cell east out of Flagstaff as it drifted along north of I-40. I managed some time lapses south of the Twin Arrows/I-40 exit as it was draping a shaggy shelf cloud around its core. I paced it further east to Buffalo Range Road where it ran into a boundary being laid down by another line of north-south convection to the east. The interaction worked some beautiful structure into the updraft of the original cell before it merged, mushed and gusted out. I tried for some more convection further north on the AZ-87 toward Dilkon. Nothing strong materialized, but the landscape was stunning against the tattered sky.

6 August

Another noon chase, and another cell drifting east out of Flagstaff. This one was over Doney Park with a severe warning when I first got on it. The warning soon dropped off and I ran some more time lapse ops on the structure at Twin Arrows again. Later that evening while visiting friends, a pair of cells popped up north of the San Francisco Peaks. The sun was setting and casting a mellow light on the anvil and updrafts as lightning moved around their innards. A few bolts snuck a peek outside the clouds, but I only caught a couple while shooting the time lapse sequence.

10 August

Some tropical storm moisture and a Pacific low overlapped a bit over northern Arizona, and I headed east once again for a look. My first view was from east Flagstaff of a cell to the southwest over Kachina Village. Although the base was strung out, it was still decent by Arizona standards as it played at displaying some tail cloud characteristics. After that dissipated, I got east on I-40 and hung out at Homolovi State Park for a while, grabbing time lapse as a new cell got going southwest of Winslow. This one sported some more beautiful structure as the orange landscape reflected up onto the base of the storm. Bryan Snider and his wife Monika showed up and we shot some time lapses together as the storm grew a lowering and grumbled at us. We got ahead of it as the rain moved in and watched from Hibbard Road as it withered and sheared away. Later that night, another round of convection slowly moved up from Verde Valley and gave an opportunity for some nighttime lightning photography at Sunset Crater National Monument. Not a lot of nearby CG activity as the storms weakened by this point, but still some good under-cloud illumination against the cinder hills and ponderosas.