May 31, 2021

From my morning email to the group:

"Just super briefly, will type up more later when I get a chance. Definitely looks like a boundary play today where we chase the convectively reinforced cold front, and especially the trailing end of it where the surface winds are strongly backed. Instability more modest, but this has been the play for the past two days over Colorado, so hopefully it's our turn. Preliminary target is Carlsbad to Hobbs 21z to 0z. "

Monday, May 31 was our last day of coordinated team chasing for the season. Storms fired by midafternoon in far southern New Mexico. With limited roads, we couldn’t get in close until they entered southwestern Texas, and we again found ourselves heading for the Pecos area. Initial storm structure looked promising with supercell structure and wall clouds, but then quickly transitioned into an outflow dominant high precipitation complex.

We chased a line of cold front storms southeast of Pecos, noting prolific cloud to ground lightning. But it looked like our chances for a tornado were over pretty much as soon as the chase begun. We punched back through the line, heading north to go after new development. We got this view of blooming convection on the north side of the complex between Barstow and Pecos. Cells didn’t last long in the worked over air, however. We then made a long distance and vain play for new development coming off the foothills west of Carlsbad and Roswell. We plodded through construction zones back into New Mexico, arriving in the evening as things were cooling off. The small cells were transitioning into elevated state as a result. Weary from two weeks on the road, Brindley and I were done putting in hundreds of miles and hours for what we considered rather lackluster storms. We called the chase and said a brief farewell to Anton and Tracie for the season. It was sad to end on a low note after what had been an overall down year for us. Then we began the two day trek back home, stopping in Lubbock for the night and making it to Rolla, Missouri the following day.