Just a few days prior I spent a weekend chasing, I then had to work on Monday/Tuesday but that was taken up with plenty of interviews so I was a fair way behind!  I woke up at 4am on Wednesday morning to try and get everything done in time for work…and finally by 12:30pm I could leave Brisbane (about 1.5hrs later than I had hoped).  The overall storm complex lasted over 12 hours – of which I chased for about 7 hours!

I decided to head out towards Boonah initially and then maybe out to Warwick.  Given the look of the Cumulus on the coast (looked very coastal showery almost), I decided to continue heading west.  There was a nice line of convection on the central/western Downs on the vis satpic which had caught my interest too.

By the time I got to Warwick, a couple of cells had already started to get going near Inglewood.  I pushed westwards and headed towards Inglewood.  One thing was for sure, there was no shortage of CGs!!  Heaps of them, I stopped just east of Inglewood and took some quick footage and photos because heading back east a little to try and get a more prolonged (and safer) view.  I setup the tripod and got some fantastic timelapse of what was a lovely HP supercell.  The green in the storms were particularly impressive!!

It was moving surprisingly slowly (and lasting).  There were some beautiful inflow bands streaming overhead into it.  However I noticed a few CGs out the front for a bit, and started to wonder if I should move.  A minute later, the storm answered that with a CG striking behind me about 200-300m away!  I thought I had better pack up the tripod and at the very least sit in the car.  As I was packing up the tripod another CG struck – this time 50-100m away!!  Way too close for comfort!  But not 10 seconds later, another struck – this time probably the closest call I’ve had to date.  It’s one of those moments where everything seems to go slow, and then speeds up again.  I felt a fuzz/buzz over my hair…I then remember seeing hundreds of CG branches all around me, with the main bolt striking beside, about 5-10m away!  I never had such a fright in my life when it came to lightning, I felt a tingling of pins and needles go through my body – whether or not that was due to the charge on the ground or my body just reacting to the fright I’m not sure!  All I know is that I couldn’t stand and literally collapsed into the car.  I wanted to leave (also spurred on by the fact that over the next 2-3minutes, there was a CG within 50-300m every 10-15 seconds), but couldn’t until I could gain enough composure and control in my legs to get going.

After that I headed well east – stopping in Gore.  The CGs were no less frequent (made daytime CGs quite easy and was also odd given the storm was now gusting out), but at least they were further away! 

However another 10mins later, I had another CG strike behind me – knowing what happened last time I quickly jumped back into the car (tripod and all), before shooting off towards Karrara.  Here I wasn’t sure whether to head E (the main cell was going east, still defined albeit gusting out), or north.  A lot of convection (and even some storms) was developing 20-50km to the E of the main storm so I thought I’d head northwards to get out of the clutter. 

There were more cells to the NW of the main line and I was hoping they’d take over – they did!

I headed up to Leyburn where the guster was getting progressively nicer, however another cell further NW again was looking more and more dominant so I headed up to Felton. 

I got some nice timelapse of the guster coming across the golden fields (which to me, just epitomises the Downs), but in doing so the storm got too close (and given roads aren’t the greatest), made it hard to get out of!

At first it was just heavy rain and gusty winds of no more than 50km/h…however soon enough the rain became absolutely torrential with stronger winds to 90-100km/h.  Then the hail came, only small, most stones were 1-2cm, but I know the sound of hailstones, and there were some larger (3cm) stones too.  However the volume of hail was quite impressive – the sound was absolutely deafening as a barrage of 100-120km/h winds blew thousands of hailstones onto the car!  It was an incredible experience.

Once it was over I was able to head north towards Toowoomba, just north of me a few trees were snapped in half at the base.  One was even over the road, and there was heaps of flash flooding as small creeks and streams just swallowed up the roads.  The deepest I encountered was around 15cm over the road…that was just a taste of what was to come.  I gave the report to the BoM and then continued onwards.

From Toowoomba I headed east to Gatton and then down to Mulgowie, the storm weakened briefly but intensified as it approached Mulgowie.  It was now well and truly night time, but unfortunately, given the amount of moisture, there was too much cloud in front of the storm to get any CG photos.  However I did receive another burst of 100km/h winds and torrential rain.  The CGs though!  They still didn’t disappointed, on the video you can hear the constant booms of close CGs which is quite impressive being in the car and heaving torrential rain.

I headed back up to Laidley – things were getting nasty quick!  Streets had turned into rivers, water was lapping up at peoples homes, some roads were already half a metre deep.  My nana lives in Laidley, so the first thing I did was drive to their place (given it’s lowish), but they were OK.  I gave them a call though to double check they were OK before ringing the BoM to let them know of the report (as they hadn’t warned for the flash flooding I had reported earlier and wanted to make sure they knew) before heading back onto the Warrego and heading eastwards.  I could have also gone through Rosewood, well – perhaps that would have been an even more interesting experience given they had nearly 250mm over about 2 hours! 

It was one of the worst drives back home…torrential rain the entire way.  I was tired (not much sleep), it was getting late and I just wanted to sleep.  No such luck…the interviews came streaming in all through the night as the storm made its way into the main metropolitan area.  Ipswich and many western suburbs were going under water…freeways were being cut and things were getting nasty.   It was a long day and the next day things were going to get no better…