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A good chase - watched a storm complex go near Warwick bringing 6 inch hail drifts along with trees and sheds being blown down!, |
An upper level trough was encroaching into the NE NSW and SE QLD regions on this day. A low pressure system was situated to the west of Moree ensuring a warm and moist northerly flow would prevail over most of the regions. Conditions were not favourable for widespread thunderstorm activity, but suggested that along the ranges, in particular the Northern Tablelands and Eastern Darling Downs would be worth a chase. My initial target area was Tenterfield, I thought this would be a good position to start off. The other area that I did give thought to was closer to the low and trough towards Goondiwindi and Moree. However I decided that I’d prefer to remain on the ranges and stick with the upper level trough.
I headed towards Warwick at first, and decided to finally meet a friend (fellow weather nut) of mine – Adam Cole. I picked him up from work at the Railway and we went to the lookout tower and watched development to the south. I offered to take Adam down south with me, and then when we headed back north again I’d drop him back at Warwick. We decided to have one last quick look at things at his house before heading south. We observed some very nice cells to the SSE on the way south to Tenterfield, with nice updrafts and pileus!
 
However I knew that it’d be a pain chasing because the cells were to the east of the New England Hwy, but too far west for the Northern Rivers too!
We refueled at Tenterfield and had a call from Jason and Ben who were also chasing. They were just east of Tenterfield watching the cells to their south and southeast. We decided to head east to meet up with them, so we shot east watching some very nice cells just to the southeast! We met up the others within about ten minutes, and jumped out of the car and looked over the ridge – very spectacular site, with a large suspicious lowering churning away, but it was just hidden from view by the hills near us! We watched as the large lowered area of smooth cloud was being sucked into the base of the storm.
We decided to shoot east to get a view. There was a dirt road that went off the highway towards the southeast, we decided to take it as it looked promising for a clearing there (the entire area from here on was full of trees and very limited views!) We finally got a view...”What the **** is that!?” I said as I ripped up the handbrake – funnel cloud!!! We jumped out of the car, but the funnel cloud was already retracting into the base of the cloud, hence we were unable to get any footage and photos of it while at its best, however it the video does show the protrusion very nicely.
We sat and watched as the others (20 seconds behind us), rolled up. Adam and I decided to see if we could get closer, so we continued down the dirt road until we found a old dirt track that went up onto a hill – desperate to get out of the trees we went up the hill. We jockeyed for position on the hill – not wanting to get caught by the rain and hail shafts that would back the track we were on rather boggy!
 
 
The outflow was quite strong and cold, up to 30kn! The temperature at Tenterfield was 32C, the temperature had now dropped to just below 18C!!! The number of lowerings and scud outflows were phenomenal! The storm had become outflow dominated and had stopped moving in a northward direction and was now moving northeast. We moved and headed back down the road we came from – but the winds were now gusting to gale force, and I was dodging falling branches across the road! With Adam comically saying in the background “Left! Right! Left!” As I kept dodging the branches (as per Twister!)
 
Finally we got back onto the highway and headed east – we saw some nice rotation just to our north though!
And then we got caught in rain! There was a lack of CG’s in this though, despite a fairly active AM radio! We did however see a few very nice pulsing CG’s though, as well as a couple of dead trees partially on the roads. The rest of the highway went through the main range, and we decided to pull back and head back to towards Tenterfield in case something else develops that was in a better region for us to chase. We met back with Ben and Jason on the way to Tenterfield. We saw some very nice development to our north and we decided to head back north towards Stanthorpe and Warwick to try and intercept this. Unfortunately these cells were all forming over areas that were totally unchasable! Which was annoying to say the least.
 
 
We ended up playing catch-up, as development formed and propagated explosively towards the NNW for the entire journey at Warwick. Once at Warwick we immediately went to the lookout tower to watch the storms to the east. Quite a site! And the outflow was a sustained 40kn with some stronger gusts – Adam nearly lost his footing at one stage, and I was holding onto the camera equipment for fear it’d be blown off the edge! We watched as an absolute monster cell emerged from the mass of storms, pushing up huge updrafts on its NW edge, and producing massive amounts of hail!
 
The hail foot on it was enormous, and it was just totally white! It was hard to believe it was a hailshaft. I had to leave Adam in Warwick, but went further NE back onto the Cunningham Hwy and east towards Cunningham’s Gap. I wasn’t able to catch the storm, as it had just passed over the only road region and then moved back onto the ranges. However I wanted to see if there were any hail drifts of damage – and boy was there ever!!! I noticed that there were pieces of iron tangled in amongst the fences beside the road from a shed that had been demolished! As well as many large branches and trees being knocked over! Even the “60km/h” signs on the 100km/h signs due to roadworks had been conveniently blown off increasing the speed limit! Then suddenly the fields went all white and I was seeing masses of white beside the road side.
 
I quickly stopped and to my excitement was standing in ½ foot haildrifts!!! It was the most hail I had ever seen! Most of it was small, 1-2cm but there were some larger isolated stones. I was trodding over ankle deep in many places, and had great fun throwing hail around! I phoned the BoM to report this and also Ben and Jason who was a bit behind me, to tell them to look out for hail drifts!
 
 
I pottered around the general area to see what else I could find. Several of the floodways had been blocked due to hail and debris, and I actually scraped the bottom of my car going over one of the hail drifts!!! It was certainly a fantastic site! I went back onto the highway and met up with Jason and Ben, where I had a hail fight with Ben! Fantastic stuff!
 
After this, I headed back onto the other side of the ranges and slowly made my way back home. There was a nice sunset though, and the storm that had passed through the region of Maryvale that dumped all the hail and gave severe winds had weakened considerably and was now giving occasional, but spectacular CG’s and crawlers with very loud canon-ball type booming thunder!
Interestingly, another main storm system developed to the NW of this storm and went through Toowoomba and Oakey. Trees were down, and there was a lot of damage to houses reported from the winds and falling trees. There were also unconfirmed reports of tornadoes being sighted from the centre of Toowoomba!
The entire storm system was interesting as it developed. Mesolaps actually analysed a small upper level cold pool at 06z over Toowoomba, but it had gone six hours later. There were three significant thunderstorms, the first near Tenterfield which moved north before weakening and moving northeast. However soon after it died more cells formed to its northwest and again one storm become dominant and moved slightly to the left of the weaker storms. The main storm eventually collapsed north of Maryvale over the ranges before more storms developed to its NW with a main dominant cell! An interesting observation to say the least – but certainly a great day and it was good finally meeting up with Adam!
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