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Beautiful twisting updraft, and a wallcloud from another storm - very nice! |
After two exhausting days of chasing, I was quite tired on Sunday and didn’t get out as early as I had liked too! I was also wondering at the time whether it would meet expectations after two very successful supercell chases over the previous two days! In deed Sunday did not disappoint with two more supercells of which one had a very nice wall cloud attached to a very nice rotating updraft!
The day started off as a mirror as yesterday with TCU anvilling out before midday over the ranges to the SW, indicating the extreme instability already present. Things were slightly slower in getting organised though and decaying or dead cells were not dissipating readily.
 
Three days of widespread storms throughout southern QLD had taken their toll, and with a lot of moisture streaming in from the west, the upper level moisture was a fair bit higher, so things were not evaporating readily and the sky was becoming slightly cluttered.
I still headed towards the Cunningham Ranges though, and observed a very nice cell to the south (that I believe was the same supercell that give Nimben a tornado later that day in NE NSW). The cells were weaker, but not to worry! Some nicer convection was occurring to the north over the Southern Brisbane Valley region. So I headed towards the north. While doing so, I came into view of a very very nice rotating updraft! I couldn’t see the base, but looking at it I was nearly sure there just had to be a wall cloud under it, sure enough there was!
 
 
It was absolutely beautiful I thought!!! It was certainly one of the best wall clouds I had ever seen (speaking photogenically). I was very much hoping for it to drop a tornado, or at least a funnel! But no, it was too much to ask ;( However it didn’t detract from the beautiful wall cloud under the rotating updraft. I also observed some very strong and slanted hailshafts in the background, leaning at 45 to 60 degree angles at times! I sat for a while and watched this cell as I was in perfect position to view anything that formed, and eventually saw as the main updraft region shifted to another area and that this updraft eventually became engulfed in rain.
I headed to a lookout near Rosewood where I observed numerous CG’s coming out of the base, they were very frequent! But they came in bursts, for 10 seconds you might see 5 CG’s, and then there’d be a break in activity for 20 seconds, before another 5-10CG’s over a space of 10-20seconds! While sitting in the car watching, I panned the video camera around, and then looked up above @(&$*&&@( FUNNEL!!! I jumped out of the car and video taped, but it soon realised that it didn’t quite appear to be a funnel! Rather it was a rotating prong, it was rotating anti-cyclonically, which I thought was unusual! It soon retracted itself back into the cloud though. Since it was very close (almost directly above), the footage I have didn’t give a very good perspective of it unfortunately.
 
I headed east towards Walloon and videod more lowerings on the storm, before eventually realising that this was not going to go in a favorable area for me to chase.
 
So I hung back and stayed around Ipswich for a bit, the mammatus was awesome...I think all up I saw over two hours of constant mammatus in the sky on this day! A cell to the south had caught my attention for a while, it had staggered off the ranges and was trying very hard to do something, but couldn’t quite get itself going. However it had finally got itself a very strong pulse, and I flew towards the south of Ipswich as this current supercell was going over the Brisbane Valley ranges and was of no use to me anymore! Chaser convergence with Rals at Ipswich, and what a beautiful sight!!! A beautiful corkscrew updraft going up on the back, with interesting lowerings constantly teasing! Nice CG’s were striking the ground too!
I decided that I wanted to head further south, towards Boonah, Rals also decided to do the same thing. There were numerous beautiful CG’s from this storm, absolutely magnificent in fact!!! I was noting though a lot of other cells were starting to get going too though, and within twenty minutes it had appeared that a line of storms had formed, which was no good to me as the sky just got very cluttered! Received some very heavy rain from the supercell that due to all of the other cells forming around, was now on its way out. After some umming and ahhing and some radar info, I decided to head east. Another supercell was heading towards the Gold Coast (the one that went through Nimben I believed), and while I didn’t think that I’d be able to get there in time, was hoping to see at least some good updrafts at the bank end. Alas, that didn’t happen either! But saw some magnificent updrafts from some short lived pulse cells to the south of Beaudesert!
I had to head back home though now, but I was fortunate enough to intercept another line of storms currently going over Brisbane. There was fairly frequent CG’s, I knew a lookout and I waited at Murrarie Reserve of the storm to move through. The rain was absolutely torrential! Well over 100mm/hr, and the winds gusted up quite strong too. There were many close CG’s, still giving very loud thunder with the windows closed! One CG struck within 100-200m and blacked out the area for 20-30seconds or so before the power came back on! In about ten minutes time it was over though, and I stayed to watch CG’s at the back end of the storm, but had to return home due to family commitments!
 
Yet ANOTHER terrific chase I thought!!! I originally thought that it wasn’t quite as exciting as the previous few days, but managed to slap some sense into myself (after being slapped by the Victorians!) and realised how great it really was once more!!! Unbelievable!!!!
Thanks to Dr Pearce, Andrew McDonald and Daniel Weatherhead for updates!!!
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