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Ranges Funnel & Rainbow Chase!
A strong upper level low was to develop over NSW and move northwards during Saturday night. Storms formed over the NW Slopes and Plains region and continued to move ENE towards SE QLD overnight. At around 2-3am they crossed the ranges and intensified as they came into the coastal moisture and produced a nice line of storms.
I got woken up at about 5:30am by Dr Pearce & Andy kindly informing me of the approaching storms. We got some moderate to heavy rain (but not torrential), and some gusty (40-50km/h) winds for a minute or so. Some nice lightning and thunder, started off at once every 10 seconds or so! The lightning was mostly CC, but it lit up the area like day at times! (It was totally dark otherwise). I did get one flang though.
I was disappointed that the SW’lies came through and dried things out, I knew that it’d inhibit things for today when I saw that the winds no longer looked likely to swing back towards the SE. However the DP’s were quite high for SW’lies (around 11-14C), although drier further inland on the Downs. NE NSW looked like the place to be, or further well north of Brisbane. None the less, I decided that I’d take a drive down towards Beaudesert, as there had been some shower development and I was thinking that with the air so cold aloft, that anything could happen – and I would have loved a Melbourne hailstorm (in SE QLD…) On the way down to Beaudesert a line of CJ’s had developed, with lots of interesting curious little lowerings. This was primarily because the air was so dry, that the precipitation shafts were evaporating in mid air, and causing increased localised moisture levels, so these would be sucked into the updraft and other lowerings would form. I went to McDonald’s to try their two new burgers, then sat at my usual lookout just outside of town and watched the development. An interesting CJ had developed just several kilometres to my north, it looked to have twisting updrafts and curvature in the base! But I couldn’t really confirm it, and it may have just been the angle I was looking at it from.
Unfortunately this died, and I was left CJ’less for a bit until an old line of Cb’s that had recently collapsed got a second life towards the south. The development was quite fast, although tops didn’t get over 15,000ft. I decided to drive closer to this line, so headed down towards Hillview. I stopped at another little favourite lookout spot of mine near Hillview and watched as the cell started to re-glaciate. Then to my amusement (and utter surprise), I heard a rumble of thunder!!! I couldn’t believe it! This cell was glaciating at 15,000ft – and not getting any higher, and it was producing lightning!!! However, I did notice the cell get much higher (22-23,000ft) later on, so perhaps there was another part of the storm that I wasn’t seeing. I also watched the front of the storm and its base, it was very rounded and there was stratus wrapping around it – it was rotating!!!
Rotating and lightning from this tiny little creature, and at the same time it was producing the most brilliant rainbow too! I was excited at the novelty of this, and I headed further towards it along Christmas Creek Rd. Just 30 seconds after driving closer towards it (I was already very close to it, I was trying to see how close I could get to the rainbow so I could get a pot of gold and fly to the US for May), and I saw a small prong descend from the rotating base. It was a funnel! I quickly stopped the car and jumped out to get video footage. If the windscreen wasn’t dirty, I would have taken footage from inside the car and gotten a better contrast. As in the video footage, the funnel’s colour and texture is very similar to the rest of the cell so it’s difficult to see.
But the funnel had lasted two minutes, and I was very impressed! I wanted hail, and I could see some hailshafts, and I kept trying to get closer, but I was forced to stop and keep taking footage of the rainbows…they were very impressive! Possibly the brightest and closest I had ever seen in my life.
I got a few big drops on my windscreen, but I saw some nice mammatus a higher part of this storm, and I stopped again to take photos.
I decided to just stop beside the road and watch once more, as the cell was beginning to look like it was weakening. I decided to head back to Beaudesert and then re-assess things from there. There were much larger storms in NE NSW (but it would take too long to go through the ranges to get to them), and I was hoping for lightning later on that night. I arrived in Beaudesert on sunset, and I went just outside of town once again to take some photos of the sunset, and then went back to my lookout. I saw some interesting cells to the distant SW, three storms all lined up together, the first had a prominent overshooting top (but not shown in the capture), and all three were backshearing! I was impressed once more, but as it got dark I lost site of them.
The moon was quite bright, and it was easy to see the storms. I was watching the one to my south and hoping it’d produce lightning. Just as the Sun went down, it produced another updraft – and it intensified quite rapidly! The storm went from producing lightning from every few minutes, to every five seconds or so in the space of one to two minutes! Unfortunately, the lightning display it (and other cells behind it), was sporadic. It seemed that whenever I got my video camera out of the car to start filming the lightning, it stopped. When I put it back in the car within a few minutes the storm picked up lightning intensity! I decided just to watch the lightning, some nice CC bolts were wrapping around the back of the updraft. It also produced the occasional CG, but from where I was sitting nothing huge. Although from what Michael Bath has said in his reports, it was much better on the other side of it (and subsequently under it too!) All up today was a novelty. Storms now, while not unusual are unseasonal and anything in late autumn or winter to me is simply just a bonus! Seeing a funnel, the rainbows and a nice sunset made the afternoon all worth while and a bit of a break from study. |
