by CKR
I intrigued myself last week by missing an opportunity to photograph thunderstorms in the making. So of course I've been more alert to such things. I'm realizing that such opportunities require a confluence of circumstances: clear enough here to see the distance required for such large beasts, and the beasts themselves forming up. That means no rain in the immediate area or between me and where the storms are forming. The first has been easy, unfortunately. It seems like there has been significant rain everywhere in Santa Fe but here for the past week and a half. Sunday night brought a light drizzle, but we really need more. I will go out and water after I finish this post, in the hopes of irritating the rain gods sufficiently that they notice my little piece of dry ground.
Here's a cloud development sequence I took Sunday evening, between 6:30 and 7:30, at ten-minute intervals. I had great hopes for this cloud, which built for a while and then fizzled out. There were two more that formed up and fizzled before producing much rain. I think the third one actually produced a little in the Placitas area, but not much.
I'm looking south, and you can see from the mountains that the movement is from east to west. The first set of mountains is the Ortiz, then the Cerrillos, then the Sandias. The Cerrillos are the closest to me, the Sandias the furthest, and the Ortiz in between. I think the dynamics are that the uplift of air over the Ortiz produces some condensation and cloud formation, but as the cloud drifts west the air gets dryer and there isn't sufficient moisture to sustain a full-fledged thunderstorm.
This is the development of the first cloud only.
All that buildup, and then, poof! it's gone.