Some great storms this day - many supercells with plenty of large hail!  We had one large storm which produced some beautiful gusters over the Northern Rivers.

It was another typical day for me when there’s storms…up before 5am to try and get as much work done possible so I could head out to chase!  And looking at the setup it certainly appeared like it was going to be worth it…

The main concern was moisture, DPs were still relatively low (even for October, it’s now pretty much late October, DPs should well and truly be knocking 20 degrees!)  However DPs were mostly in the mid teens (grading to the high teens on the coast, at the price, 30/13 inland, or 23/17 on the coast…)  GFS pushed a triple point up the northeast NSW coast by mid to late afternoon and this was going to be the main target area.

I got a call from Macca (who was also going to go into NE NSW) asking if I wanted to chase together.  It meant leaving a touch later, but that was fine (I haven’t chased with Macca for years and of course the fuel is a big killer now!!)  We met up at the Yatala Service Centre and shot southwards.  It was almost difficult to drive southwards though with PILES of great convection lining right up along the ranges.  However that weakened up rapidly, so we thought we would continue with the original plan of heading down towards Ballina and seeing what happens from there.

We could see massive overshoots to the south from the lines of storms between Coffs Harbour and Grafton, and the radar was showing some good supercell signatures!  By Ballina, there were 2 weak cells through the main area of the Northern Rivers.  One was to our west (which was rather LPish, before eventually snuffing out), and another was SW of Ballina by about 100km and caught our attention.  It was just ahead of the main line so we were thinking it could be in prime position.

We shot southwards to Woodburn and then decided to wait.  The storm was very highbased and looked quite messy, but it had the look of it was going to get its act together and get organized.  The strong shear meant storms were moving quickly – so we decided to try and keep well ahead of the storm.

From Woodburn we shot northwards on a side road (better views, and the beat the roadworks on the main highway!)  Here we had chaser convergence with Dave (who couldn’t finish work until later in the afternoon but still headed down).  Despite the base still seeming ages away, we were getting anvil rain – and eventually, some small hail.  We shot northwards again to try and stay ahead – here we had a beautiful view of a massive RFB which later turned into a beautiful guster!

Half way to Alstonville, we found a clearing in the trees and we greeted with a rather nice looking guster. 

We continued north to Alstonville (home of the world’s slowest drivers it seems…) before shooting back to Ballina.  We shortcutted Ballina on the Teven road, and had a beautiful view of the guster over some fields.

We continued north and then northeast towards Byron Bay where we stopped at the lighthouse.  The next few photos are a sequence of photos of the guster up until dusk.  We didn’t get the big supercell through Ipswich, but still got rewarded with some beautiful structure!