An incredible HP supercell moved NW from Rathdowney to eventually hit Ipswich - bringing hail the size of tennis balls!

After yesterday I certainly woke up with a buzz!  It was a tad cooler in the morning than the previous morning (and a little drier).  In fact the sounding was slightly concerning, but the air still had a good punch to it.  The setup was a little different, shear was a little stronger in the mid levels (and more westerly as opposed to southwesterly), but the 850-700 shear was much weaker.  LIs were still very healthily progged around -7 to -8 over NE NSW and SE QLD.

We watched mid level showers develop over the NW Slopes of NSW and fly eastwards, some of these eventually became showers over the Northern Rivers (and eventually big storms!)  Meanwhile the vis satellite was showing some nice convection in the Southern Downs.  This time my usual chase partner (Dave) was able to chase, and Julian also came along.  After tossing up on a few options, we decided to head to Beaudesert.

Large towers (and the tops of big CBs) could be seen off on the southern part of the Border Ranges.  Grabbing some Maccas, we continued to head south towards Rathdowney and there we decided to stop and watch.  Most of the storms were going E (in fact, one developed to our SW and began going ESE!)  It was a little concerning, but a larger storm (first supercell of the day) had developed over the Northern Rivers and was moving NE quite quickly.  It looked to slam into the storms on the ranges from behind and gave us a lot of hope that it might help push the storms northwards...

And that's exactly what happened!  Things began to get interesting quite quickly...below is a collage of photos as we chased the storm from Rathdowney up into southern Brisbane and across to Ipswich and Fernvale (where we had 3cm hail and 100km/h winds).