October 26, 2011 - Dalby Supercell
Written by Anthony Cornelius   

 

26-10-11-01

Dalby Supercell Chase - October 26, 2011

Today was looking like an interesting day with a deep southeast change moving through the area ahead of some nice deep rotational shear.  We targeted the central to northern Darling Downs.  It took a while for convection to get started, but once it got going it was very quick...some storms west of Toowoomba immediately showed promise with a small wall cloud developing...

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However some larger cells were building to the north, so we decided to head for these.  It ended up being a good choice because the southern cells quickly weakened.  The storm evolution was very sudden with a very large wall cloud rapidly developing in front of the storm...

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However the storm matured early with the main inflow jet arriving quite late, meaning that the RFD quickly shot ahead and turned the storm into a more outflow dominated system.  Not before bringing some impressive dust and even a gustnado!

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gustnado

(Gustnado can be seen to the left of the car in front of us in between the two powerpoles).

 

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We continued to head north through Dalby, but with the Bunya Mountains in the way it meant we had to follow it on the side rather than in front of it and by the time the storm finally crossed the Bunyas it was too weak to produce anything interesting.  But it was still a fun and exciting chase, albeit brief!  Just a shame the main inflow jet didn't arrive a few hours earlier.

 

 

26-10-11-04