Darling Downs & SE QLD Storm Chases October 13-15, 2011

We had a few days of decent storm potential over the Southeast on from the 13th to the 15th of October.  On both days I had the pleasure of chasing with a good friend (and professional photographer), Tony Middleton while on the 15th, my usual chase partner (David Sercombe) and one of my best friends who chases in NE NSW (David Ellem) also came long!

On the 13th, Tony and I headed into the Darling Downs where we witnessed a small but persistent and locally intense storm cell which must have had the world's smallest wall cloud sit there for about an hour!

Eventually the system became more outflow dominated close to sunset and put out a bit of a guster...

On the 15th, it was promising to be a fantastic day.  And well - it was for anyone who didn't chase (it seemed).  A huge outflow rush got started thanks to the stronger than expected low level westerlies - that meant many chasers (including us) got stuck behind with a view of a constant whales mouth the entire time!

We nearly got back in front of the storm south of Redcliffe, but we ran out of road with the ocean beside us...but we did get some decent hail on the Gateway Mwy - we had 2-3cm stones, but there appeared to be some larger stones on the road itself...

The only consolation is that we were treated to a nice sunset off the coast!