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Pulse storms developed on the Downs and were quite lightning active once again - but a squall line from the south stole the show giving a spectacular night lightning display! |
I had my last exam for the semester at 9am in the morning. After that it looked good for storms, particularly on the Downs! I finished my exam early at around 11:30, but I had to fill fuel, get some more film and video tape and a few other things. I was finished that by close to 12:30, to which I was just in time to see some updrafts going up to the south.
I headed down the New England a little and stopped near Clifton. There were some explosive updrafts just off to my south and southwest, it was looking quite impressive!
I headed east towards the Gatton road to get into position, but the storms didn’t appear to be moving very quickly. I stopped on a hill and watched – there was some very strong outflow pushing up a lot of dust just to my south! I later learnt that some sheds had been destroyed in this region, with cricket ball hail! I was extremely surprised about the hail report, it certainly did not look like a hailer!
 
But I guess that with the explosive initial development, updrafts would have pulsed strong enough to support it before weakening a little. There was plenty of lightning to the south, but my first CG was actually a flang a few hundred metres away a fair distance from the storm! Took me by surprise…but no more followed, the remainder of the CGs were to the south in the storm.
 
I ended up crossing the range towards Gatton, the lightning seemed concentrated just to my south, and I waited a little while. There was persistent thunder, but I couldn’t see very much from the other side – in fact it looked to have weakened quite considerably which was a real pain! After some friendly cows poking their heads in my car window to say hello, I got an update and was informed of some larger storms on the Downs and that the cell I was originally on had collapsed into a thundery rain area.
I made a dash for Toowoomba and headed just outside of the city to the west and watched to my north. There were plenty of CGs on the edge of the rain curtain to the north, it was quite nice to watch! I did witness an unusual phenomenon though – during the discharges of some CGs (three of them, all within about two minutes of each other) there was a bright blue glow about a kilometre or so away!
 
 
It was unusual, I originally thought it was a power transformer but later discovered it was actually a very high TV antenna! I’m still not sure what this was…I did wonder about St Elmos Fire (as I’ve heard it being described as a burning blue flame, which is exactly what this looked like) but I’m unsure as I’ve never seen a photo of it (and I’m not sure if one actually exists!)
I sat and watched before creeping a little further north and watching again. The storm put out very strong outflow, up to 30-33 knots or so, it ended up pushing my tripod over that I had the video on!!!
 
 
After the storm moved further away and the rain started covering the CGs more, I headed west a little as there were some developing cells there, but they didn’t do very much unfortunately so I just watched the storm to the north for a little bit more.
 
I got back into Toowoomba just after nightfall and got some dinner. I checked the net at uni and saw a very large line of storms approaching the Texas area, about a two hour drive to my SSW. By the time I would get down to there, I thought the line should be around Inglewood (the line didn’t look like weakening at all!) Desperate for more lightning (once you get daytime lightning and awesome CGs, you need night lightning also!!!) I shot SSW towards Inglewood, and went to my usual lookout about 20km E of Inglewood and watched frequent CGs across a gustfront to my S!
Lightning overall was 1-2 flashes a second across the line. There were some particularly awesome but sporadic CGs off to my SE, every 2-3 minutes there’d be a massive CG pulsing for nearly a second! Was great to watch, I took some video and some photos of the lightning before heading towards Inglewood. The line of storms were still developing, so I shot northwards towards Millmeran and ended up stopping just outside the power station to take some video of some awesome CC/CG combinations to my north! Some of the best I’d seen…I only wish it wasn’t raining as it would have been a fantastic photographic opportunity! Still, the video is good (just a shame the captures don’t do it justice).
 
 
 
The storms continued northwards but were weakening slightly and static had tapered off a fair bit. It was now after 10pm and I was quite tired (after a week of studying…and had averaged 2.5hrs sleep a night due to medical problems over that week) so I decided to head home as it was 3hrs to get back to Brisbane. Very much worth it though! It was a great way to celebrate the end of my exams!
The first storm of the day can be seen developing S of Toowoomba, this dropped the cricket ball hail in an intense pulse. Another line of storms developed near Dalby and south of there which were also very intense. Not shown on this radar is a large squall line that developed near Moree and moved northwards through the western and central Downs later that evening.
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