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Written by Anthony Cornelius
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After a supercell earlier in the afternoon, a severe squall line with some great lightning moved over the area to give a lightshow! |
I talked to Macca who informed me of an approaching squall line to the west - still a distance (100km or so), but static was constant. I headed towards Aratula and grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading to the edge of town on a dirt road to get a view. It was getting dark and I thought I should be able to see lightning soon as it is so flat on the Downs. Sure enough, the lightning showed - distant CGs, about 50-60km away. I got the video camera out and videoed. It was a large lightning active area, but at this stage no cell was overly frequent, but it was combining to give a flash a second. Soon I had a 180 degree lightning front approaching - I could see the gustfront, but it wasn't overly spectacular. I saw what I thought were more interesting lowerings until I worked out it was actually fires! There was not a large amount of precipitation yet in the storms and they were quite lightning active. One fire nearly got out of control in the town of Texas from the squall line (started near Moree I believe) and nearly threatened the entire town centre! Fortunately they gained control - presumably as re-enforcements from other towns (perhaps Inglewood) arrived.
 
 
The lightning decreased in frequency temporarily - but some cells to my west and south started to pick up. The cells to the west were soon very lightning active! One flash a second - it was here that I witnessed by first ever GC (ground-cloud) strike! Possibly from a tower located near Pittsworth (would have been in that general direction anyway.) The lightning was absolutely going off!!! 2-3 flashes a second all up now across the line, most of it from the storms to my west. The powerlines were occasionally humming - but not persistently.
 
 
 
Although they did eventually - which made me pack up my stuff and go! But the storm had gained speed (well, the outflow of it did), I had planned to make a dash north and keep ahead of it - but that wasn't going to be the case. Just north of Aratula I got caught in the first of the outflow. It sent 80-90km/h winds over with sporadic rain and branches flying across the road and into my car. I kept trying to go north in the hope to get ahead of it, but the highway goes a little NNW - and the storm line was aligned NW/SE - so it was too ambitious! Soon I got caught in the main part of the storm, winds up to 100-110km/h drove blinding rain and debris across the road - my high beams were barely penetrating the rain! It was a case of trying to look for markers (it was totally dark now). I had to dodge one tree across the highway - fortunately most of the trees are well back from the highway - otherwise there would have been more! But I was dodging branches that had come off the trees and traveled a fair distance across! I continued along - crawling, realising that there was no way I was going to get out of the storm if I tracked north, but in the near zero visibility there was no real place to pull over or do a U-turn.
The winds did let off after about 10-15mins, but they were still strong! I was hearing CGs that I couldn’t see due to the rain! Even then they were being dulled out by the rain – it was certainly an extremely intense drive. I phoned the Bureau to inform them of the winds. I ended up getting out of it eventually when it moved ahead – I went through Toowoomba then headed back east again, but unfortunately I never caught up with the line! It weakened before it got to Brisbane, but over my position radar showed a nice bow echo over the region.
Certainly a fantastic “warm up” type chase to the big end of year chase!!!
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