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Written by Anthony Cornelius
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Sunday, 21 September 2008 00:00 |
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A spectacular guster and sunset in Capricornia! |
We awoke to overcast conditions which was disappointing originally, however it ended up being mostly low cloud and therefore it’d be likely to burn off during the day as it warmed up. I went to the bakery in the morning to pick up some bread – at 7:30am it was already a steamy 28/24! We wanted to head north relatively early as it would be easier to catch development to our south than it would be to our north. Storms looked to be a little more inland today (but still reach the coast), just not do what the previous day did with storms exploding when they came within 10km of the coast. The lifted indicies were nothing short of impressive either with LI’s dropping down to –10 west of the central Queensland coast. We headed north up towards Gladstone, our target area was the legendary Capricornia.
We decided to refuel and get lunch at Calliope – a small town just west of Gladstone. We ordered some lunch just in time to watch the first storms begin to develop to our south. We ate lunch (it was unbearably hot and humid!) and then decided to find a lookout. We saw a small hill that had an old track lead up to it – it was very rocky though so we took it very slowly.
 
It was extremely steep – I had to engage low gear to get up it! It was an awesome 360 degree view at the top though! The storms to our south were looking very nice – we discussed our options. Things were going to develop in our area in the coming hours, but the convection in our region looked like it still had a long way to go yet! For this reason we decided to head south and get the stuff about an hour south of us first before heading north again and get the later developing storms.
It looked very impressive to our south with big storms (one in particular) absolutely exploding! It produced and extensive anvil with some nice mammatus but for some reason it weakened afterwards. It was still a storm, just nowhere as impressive. It was strange as it was so explosive originally and then it just became sub-standard with the odd nice updraft, but nothing else.
 
I’m still not sure why it weakened! After waiting for a while to see if it’d regain to its former glory we decided to head back towards Calliope. We then headed WSW along the Dawson Hwy towards Biloela where another line of storms were developing. The entire sky was covered with anvil cirrus by now!
 
We got close to the ranges and there was one particular storm that looked quite impressive – it had plenty of CGs and developed a small mesocyclone!
 
 
 
We later found it that it was a right moving supercell (it was going SE), which was the worst direction it could have gone! If only it went in a “normal” direction (ie NE), we could have chased it along the highway. It also had some nice hail shafts and we got a few small bits of hail as it glided by just to our south. We decided to head back ENE towards Calliope as it looked as if a line was developing and thought it might turn into a squall line situation. I couldn’t believe how much speed it had gained though! I knew what speed we were doing – the actual squall line (ie wind change) was moving out at a good 80-90km/h!
 
 
The winds were very strong along the boundary…mostly 80km/h, but may have gusted into severe at stages. At times it would have been dangerous to stand outside because of all of the branches and debris flying through the air! It even became hazardous on the road to drive, because the winds were buffeting against the car and pushing it across the road. That in itself was ok…but we were approaching other cars coming the other way, and you could see we were wobbling in and out of our lane, and they were too from the winds! It was quite hair-raising! There was plenty of dust being kicked up also, and we were continually teased with what we knew was a spectacular gustfront developing. However we only got to see the inside – we just couldn’t catch up, the road needed to be more direct. In the end the gustfront moved well ahead of the storm. We stopped in Calliope and waited for the storm to come over…it gave some lovely CGs and some brief heavy rain, but not what we were expecting/hoping for!
 
 
 
In the end we decided to head back west and see what else there was. After some bursts of heavy rain, we came to a clearing – it was hazy to the west but there wasn’t anything there. However there was a magnificent anvil shield spreading behind the storm and it looked quite spectacular!
In the end we decided to head back west and see what else there was. After some bursts of heavy rain, we came to a clearing – it was hazy to the west but there wasn’t anything there. However there was a magnificent anvil shield spreading behind the storm and it looked quite spectacular!
 
The Sun eventually came out and then shone behind the storm and gave a brilliant double rainbow over the fields! This was to be the start of perhaps the best sunset both of us had ever witnessed!!!
 
As the Sun continued to set the mammatus behind the storm became more noticeable…the sky was full of it! But it has a beautiful orange-golden glow from the sun setting behind! With the rainbow still in sight too…it became a case where you had to keep looking around. But if that wasn’t enough, there was still another line of storms to our NW that were moving generally ESE or SE.
They had produced an awesome roll cloud that became detached and moved over…it looked awesome!!!
Even when it passed over us it still looked just as spectacular! (Normally when they pass over they don’t look as good as they used to).
This was still happening during the sunset mammatus and rainbow too! What a magnificent sight! But there was still more! There were CCs and crawlers going across the anvil overhead too!!!
Eventually when the Sun set we ended up heading towards Gladstone to try and get an offshore lightning show. There wasn’t a huge amount of lightning, but the crawlers!!! Oh…how spectacular!!! Many lasting a couple of seconds (and sometimes there were multiple or return crawlers!!!) It was fantastic!!! We tried to stop and take photos, however they didn’t really come out. It as difficult because the wind was blowing away form the storm and there was light rain at the time. So the camera lenses kept getting wet and it was difficult to stop that from happening but oh well…still got most of the crawlers on video at least! I've made some frame by frame captures and converted them into avi format...click on the lightning strike to get the AVI movie of it:
 
 
We eventually found a motel for the night in Gladstone…but just when we thought it was over and having dinner, another storm developed to our north. Our motel was on a hill and pretty much had views all over Gladstone! So we were able to watch the lightning..it wasn’t spectacular but it was still nice to watch over dinner. What a day!!!
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Last Updated ( Monday, 20 October 2008 22:16 )
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