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Very nice wall cloud and a small mid-level funnel from this chase in the Downs! Afterwards I got slammed by a strong microburst, before staying the night in the Downs and chasing the next day, but storms formed too early - so they just pulsed. |
A fairly strong upper level trough was pushing into Vic/NSW on Thursday, the 26th of April – this extended into the southern Queensland region, but much weaker. A surface trough was lying through the NW Slopes and Plains to the Maranoa region (the next district west of the Darling Downs). Temperatures were going to be relatively mild (in the mid 20’s), but with the cooler air aloft warmer air wasn’t needed as critically as normal. DP’s were also down, only sitting in the mid to high teens, but again the slightly colder air would offset the need for higher DP’s. The shear however was quite strong, and was possibly the main reason why I decided to chase.
Unfortunately, showers and storms developed way too early on the Thursday, just before 10am things were already forming near Moree. None the less I decided to head down towards Warwick, and possibly head further west from there. I was hoping that a line of storms would form and move eastwards and that I’d be able to intercept that. Along the way, the sky was looking unstable though, and I was wondering whether anything would develop in SE QLD along the coast, or if the trough would be too far inland.
 
The line did move eastwards, but it was very weak – in fact, it was literally a line of thundery rain. I sat at Warwick, looking at a very dark and black sky, thinking to myself “where is the lightning!?” Not one flash of lightning – although I think that the line was probably further away then I first estimated it to be. A very large anvil was streaming over – a sign of the upper level winds, it was clouding over the area! To the north I saw some CJ’s developing in the Sun, and also towards the border ranges there were also CJ’s developing. I was torn between what I should do – it was a potential bust situation, as it looked like the band would dominate to give rain. I went back up towards the junction of the New England and Cunningham Hwy’s and sat there and watched. I chose this area to give me maximum road options.
The line of thundery rain to the ESE was beginning to weaken – it wasn’t as dark, and the anvil began to evaporate into the air as there was no fresh convection pushing up to reproduce the anvil. This got me interested. Eventually most of the eastern and southern Downs went cloud (and anvil) free! I kept watching the line with interest, the northern edge looked to have intensified just a little. It was heading into the Downs area which had had a fair bit of heating (except for about an hour of cooling from the anvil). I kept watching, it started producing some inflow scud, so I made a dash northwards towards Clifton, and then decided to head west (it was beginning to pick up speed).
Just outside of Clifton I saw some very interesting lowerings – a cone shaped lowering wrapped in rain nearly reaching the ground!
 
I flew westwards towards the storm, but was unable to get close enough to really see the lowering properly, and it ascended after a few minutes! I continued to drive closer – I saw a huge area of dust being kicked up by the storm along the outflow region, I was impressed at how quickly the storm had intensified! Good inflow was coming into the storm from the ENE judging by the inflow bands coming into it.
 
I made my way towards Felton, and sat just off the road for a while, I watched as a nice little funnel developed just to my north, I think it was a mid level funnel - none the less it was quite a nice little creature!
A little while later, a wall cloud begun to form underneath the updraft base!!! You could see the rotation around the updraft just above it!
 
 
At the same time, I was starting to get hit by rain. It was very gradual, but the rain and wind increased steadily. From drizzle and 30-40km/h winds, to heavy rain and gusts to around 60-70km/h! I soon lost visibility of the wall cloud and headed further north (still in Felton – very large town size wise, divided into three 5 house sections with 5-10km gaps between them all!) The storm had produced a nice gust front, it was fluctuating between inflow and outflow dominated – sort of pulsing, you could still see the wall cloud, just tucked in behind the gust front. But it was having trouble trying to maintain itself.
What didn’t help was the outflow had pushed ahead of the storm and had kicked up some of the congestus to its north and they had now turned into storms. It was quite cold, I was shivering as the temperature dropped towards the 20C mark! I saw some nice horizontal rotation curl up near the dying wall cloud – and I continued to move NNE (now towards Felton East!)
 
I stopped once again – the guster was MAG!!! (Mean And Green), the storm had definitely become more outflow dominated, but it was producing some nice features. Unfortunately I was running out of space between myself and the storms, I got caught up in the rain from the storms to the north.
I looked frantically at the map – there had to be a road somewhere I could take that would lead me NE so I could get around the weaker storms, and stay ahead of the stronger (pulse supercell?) About 2km up the road there was a road that went E, another few kilometres after that another road went north – perfect!!! However, no plan of storm chasing ever goes as planned, the weaker storms were stronger than I had thought! The rain was TORRENTIAL, I was doing 20-30km/h and could hardly see – the winds were gusty as well which didn’t help! They were doing roadworks (widening the road from one lane, to one lane each way), and that meant no place to pull over! Even when I headed east, the road was still one lane all up – I didn’t want to park on the dirt for fear of getting bogged, so I continued to drive slowly. Because of the poor drainage, it became difficult to discern the road from the dirt – it was all just awash with water! Occasionally I ran off the road onto the dirt section, and I could feel the softness of it and then moved over accordingly. I eventually found a place where the road had widened to one lane each way with grass on the side of the roads – perfect! I pulled over (still leaving my front right wheel on the bitumen though, but there was enough room for cars to pass), and whacked on my hazards. The wind was incredible! It was like being in a carwash the way the wind and blowing the rain horizontally, in sheets and walls! In fact, I did get scared at one point, I really thought that the car was going to be blown sideways even though I was stationary! The car was rocking like anything, and the CB aerial was bending much more then it usually would if I was just driving down the highway at 110km/h! I could hear tinks on the side of the car, I thought this was hail at first, but couldn’t work out why I couldn’t see the hail. I soon worked out that is was actually stones being kicked up by the winds and hitting the side of the car, adding to the collection of stone chips! The wind was actually strong enough to push my radio antenna back into its little niche on the car roof!
 
In fact, this was the first time I had ever thought a tornado was imminent, I got a shiver down the spine when winds blowing at 100km/h from the west stopped for a brief moment, then the winds changed direction and came from the south at equally strong force, before changing to SW with possibly the strongest gusts occurring then! Thirty seconds on, the rain and wind continued, but then died down significantly as the main storm had moved further on.
The rain had eased off, so I continued to head east before going north, I got caught up in the edge of the storm again. I was doing 60-70km/h and the rain walls were coming from behind and overtaking the car! As the road changed direction, the winds were now coming against the car at an angle and you could feel the car being pushed to the side of the road with each gust! However the winds and rain weren’t as heavy as before (but still pushing the severe threshold). I got to Nobby (after going through several shallow floodways) and saw the storm to my NNW, it had weakened a fair bit as it got mixed in with the other weaker storms. I phoned the BoM to report the storm, and in return got a radar update – they had seen the main storm hit maximum reflectivity on radar, but it had since weakened significantly. But a line of storms/thundery rain was still approaching Toowoomba.
With consultation of Andrew McDonald – I decided to stay the night in Toowoomba, there were more showers storms redeveloping on the trough line, and there would be the possibility of a lightning show later on if they were able to make it. Also it would keep me in the same region for the possibility of the storms the following day, as well as do a damage survey on ASWA’s behalf (if needed) from the storm.
I enjoyed a couple hours of thundery rain – I had the lights off in my motel room while watching TV, and every so often there’d be a flash, followed by a lovely booooooom. It was quite relaxing! Unfortunately there wasn’t enough to keep the redeveloping stuff to my SW going, but I enjoyed the thundery rain so that was OK!
The next morning I decided to use some Dymocks vouchers and buy some new maps (I had received them for my birthday a while back but hadn’t had a chance to use them – thanks Doc!!!) I needed a new Australian road atlas, and a new SE QLD map – both had gotten wet when the car leaked when I had to go through a deepish floodway several months back and were a little mouldy and sticky. (Meanwhile, if anyone has been wondering if there is an updated road atlas, UBD now has one out for Australia, and it shows a lot of roads (in particular NSW), that were previously unsealed as sealed – especially between Moree, Bourke and Dubbo, it was printed early this year in 2001).
I then went to USQ to check the sat pics and forecasts – I then filled up at outrageously high prices (86.9c/L!!!) And then headed towards Nobby to drive around. Unfortunately (or fortunately perhaps) the storm had basically followed a path of paddocks and open fields. However in one area I did see three trees down – and there was a scattering of branches down that had come down very recently (presumably from yesterday’s storm).
It was only approaching midday – I still had some time, so I decided to drive around the southern Downs region, as I had never had much of a chance to do this before. I also slowly made my way to Pittsworth, and from there I had planned to drive towards Millmerran. I didn’t want to go past Millmerran, as I new that from Millmerran to Dalby and west, you came into heavily forested areas which were very chaser unfriendly! A line of CJ’s were slowly developing to the SW and W of Millmerran. However they were developing too slowly and were using all of the energy up. They did however (after a couple of hours) develop into a weak line of storms. While watching the development, I stopped and bought a pie at the Shell at Millmerran – I now hereby declare it law that if you chase near Millmerran, you MUST buy a pie there!!! Absolutely beautiful, with big chunks of beef and bacon (although a smidgeon salty), but much better than other pies that are mince and gravy.
I skirted around Millmerran – but then decided to drive a few kilometres out of town towards the east and find a place to view the storms. There was nothing spectacular, and I eventually decided nothing spectacular would happen. I did get caught up in the rain, and it was heavy – but that was about it. I got a few rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning – but then decided to head back towards the southern Downs, and if nothing looked to happen there, then the border ranges. Unfortunately, the only storms of interest were in NE NSW. The upper trough had weakened a little that day, so there wasn’t as much cold air, so it was marginally unstable. Perhaps if the storms didn’t develop so early once again, there would have been a better chance of stronger convection, but unfortunately this wasn’t to be! I still enjoyed it though, as I did a lot of pottering around the Downs region, and I was able to explore and get to know the road network of the region for future chases!
 
One thing is for sure – for everything lost, something is gained, and that goes for storm chasing as well, as its all a learning experience – not just to do with weather, but if you know the road network it makes chasing a lot easier (and a lot less dangerous if you don’t have to drive and read a map at the same time!)
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