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A very lightning active supercell moved through Boonah, north of Beaudesert and out to sea. |
It’s always funny how you compare things. I try not to – my motto when it comes to chasing is if you don’t expect anything you won’t be disappointed! (To an extent anyway), but there are certain days when you chase, and you “benchmark” them. You could get a great lightning show or storm later down the track and then you would still say “It wasn’t as good as such and such date – but close!” I often thought that the January 17, 2001 lightning show was perhaps the most spectacular nighttime display that I’ve witnessed. And even then you would get great displays and say “This is a little better in this regards, but it lacks this, this and this – which Jan 17 had so it still isn’t as good.” Well – good ole Jan 17 got a run for its money on this day!!!
One of the problems about SE QLD storms is that they are often high precipitation variety. They are still equally as severe, and spectacular, but normally you don’t see a huge amount of CGs due to the precipitation. However today had a substantial dry layer above the surface, thus moisture was scarce. SE QLD storms don’t normally like dryness, but with the approaching trough and temps well into the 40s in some areas, it wasn’t a problem today!
I was working again, although I was going to finish around the same time as the previous day. I was watching showers developing in the southern Downs, while storms developed in NE NSW. The showers didn’t develop until late – they were what got me excited! As it showed the potential for later on today. They weren’t small showers either, they were in the light blue, but they were “storm blue” (ie, showers that looked like they were developing storms). Indeed that’s what happened, a small line started to form just to the east of Warwick. They were developing nicely into the yellow/green/pink. I made a dash after work down to Beaudesert – the traffic was irritating on the Mt Lindsay Hwy though!
But finally the slow drivers pulled off one by one, and I was able to do the speed limit again (yippee!) Static was totally constant, and I was wondering if I’d be able to see any CGs soon. Sure enough like clockwork, within seconds of thinking that – CG! A second later…CG! Two seconds later…CG…CG! It was going off!!! I stopped about 5-10km north of Beaudesert in an open field to watch. The line was still a good 20-30km away, but I wanted to setup the tripod and put the video camera on to try and record the CGs!
There was little precipitation apart from two defined areas of heavy rain, but they were not overly large. Around the area was an area of light precipitation where most of the CGs were coming out of. I was basically getting constant thunder! Just one mass and dull “roar” from thunder and impossible to distinguish between the different rumbles! I could see two main cells, one to my SSW, the other to my WSW.
The cell to my WSW looked the strongest, but both ended up showing very similar structure! The one to the south though was a little smaller and had a little more precip around it, while the cell closer to me was more exposed.
Interestingly, this coincided shortly after the winds swung around to the NE from my position – the seabreeze. I sat and watched, letting the video camera do the work by catching all of the CGs, I captured 17 CGs in the first 2mins! But the number of CGs decreased on film as the storm got closer (as there is less storm per video frame as it gets closer). Still – there was no shortage of CGs! There was an interesting lowering starting to develop on the northern edge, it had a hint of curvature, but it could have been anything.
Around this time I got a call from Jonty at the BoM – wondering if I was out and about and what I could see. He mentioned that the cell to my WSW had a BWER (Bounded Weak Echo Region) in it, and that it had high reflectivities to very high heights! Music to my ears – he enquired about the structure and I mentioned that it was looking interesting and certainly looked strong/severe (producing nice rain feet, and that some areas looked very solid). I mentioned the lowering too, but didn’t say much else (it wasn’t anything special – yet!) Soon the CGs were striking the hills in front of me, about 10km or so! They were giving slightly louder rumbles over and above the still constant dull roar from thunder!
 
 
The lowering was now to my west, I was surprised at how separated the updraft area was from the downdraft area – easily over a kilometer apart! The lowering, while looked like outflow (and I had originally dismissed as outflow), was actually infact inflow! And it was developing right underneath the main updraft – the base above the lowering was getting very interesting!!! It was showing strong curvature, especially in the middle – it was like a ‘neck’ connecting back to the main lowering (a wall cloud I can only assume, although it looks too long and narrow to be a wall cloud I thought – perhaps it was the longer ‘tails’ that made it look bigger and longer than it really was!)
It did eventually weaken and gust out a little over the next ten minutes or so. But not before dropping some even closer CGs!
They were now starting to occur in front of the hills, I had to move soon – so I packed up the tripod and video and put it in the car.
 
A couple of last minute photos, and then I stood beside the car and watched for about 10 seconds. This is where I had a rather close experience with lightning! An instantaneous whip crack and flash just to the right of my eye sent a gush of warm air towards me! I had never felt the wind (or shockwave) from a CG before – and I don’t particularly want to either!!! I nearly needed to change my pants, the CG was within about 20-30m or so! I jumped into the car and did a quick sign of the cross…knowing very well I could have had a streamer sitting right above my head! I headed back onto the highway and went north a bit. The original meso was dying, but a new one was developing beside it! A massive rainfoot had also just developed on the edge of the storm!
The new meso was quite small, but still well separated from the updraft. You could make out small bands curving and rotating into it! Was quite nice to watch, but difficult to watch, as the view to the east along the Mt Lindsay Hwy is quite treed, not to mention the heavy Christmas traffic meant that eyes had to be kept on the road – no room for mistakes on the road around Christmas!
 
I found a road that connected up to another N/S road about 8km to my east, I took it and then found myself at Loganville. While heading north to head east again I saw what I thought to be a funnel – a check of the rear vision mirror and a screech to a halt on the side of the road. A very nicely descended funnel, was quite nice! You could just make out the rotation, although it doesn’t show up as well on the video – AC-video-itis struck again, but it wasn’t too bad because I didn’t zoom in that much.
 
The funnel was from near the meso area – actually, several (4) funnels developed underneath the base!!! One dissipated another formed! I didn’t video them all, I was talking to Macca on the phone and he said “Well you better stop to video it!” And I replied with a “Nah, it’s not as good as the others.” You know you’ve been spoilt when you get fussy with funnels! In hindsight I wish I took more video – but that’s always the case for me (I never take enough video).
The storm appeared to be weakening a little – but not without putting out one last funnel and an interesting shading behind the rain curtain. It caught my attention, it looks a little like a rain wrapped tornado – but it could also be hail shafts.
 
I’m not sure either way at this stage. At the time this happened, the storm was actually moving out to sea and Moreton Island copped a hammering from winds, but I didn’t hear any reports of tornadoes from there (but then again you often don’t). Upon conferring with Macca and Jonty from the BoM – I decided to head back towards Beaudesert, the supercell was going to move out to sea and become unchasable. The storms to the SW weren’t looking overly good visually, but they were pulsing from nothing into the red! And more importantly, there was the potential for yet another great big lightning show!!!
These are some damage photos taken near Boonah courtesy of the Bureau of Meteorology.
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