Day
of Storms Produces Great Gusters!
The day had started off cloudy – a sign of lots of mid level moisture, not surprising considering four days of widespread thunderstorms had gone by! However, by mid-morning the cloud was already beginning to break up. Soon the sky was filled with ACCAS and the temperature was shooting up very quickly into the high 20’s! After being chasing constantly for three days I had quite a few things to do, so I couldn’t leave until later – so the cloud cover delayed development for me so I was lucky!
I decided to head towards Mt Walker and watch the development from there. The sky was quite congestusy, but the signs of the upper level moisture still present was soon there.
Very soon a line of storms started to move off the ranges, it rapidly produced a shelf cloud and continued to get much nicer! I moved northwards to get on the northern edge of it and headed towards Rosewood. I sat just to the west of Rosewod, and watched what was now quite an impressive gust front!
As I was watching, I saw a nice funnel descend from the northern area of the gust front (just tucked in), however a hill obstructed the view towards it! I quickly headed further west towards it to get around the hill along Rosewood-Laidley Rd.
The outflow though had extended well ahead of the gust front, and as I went through an area of trees, the outflow hit me, probably up to 40 knots, there were leaves and twigs hitting the car as they broke off the trees! You could also feel it on the car. I went onto Calvert Station Rd, but it was no use – the funnel had disappeared – but I was left with a fairly photogenic view of the gust front! I headed further east, the storms appeared to be moving faster then they were on previous days.
At Rosewood I had a good view of them again, the winds were quite strong again, reaching gale force at times. The line of storms was going to go through the western and northern suburbs of Brisbane. However not knowing that area of Brisbane very well, I didn’t quite know how to get ahead of it (traffic is shocking there!) So I hung back and watched the storm move across and watched CG’s from behind it.
While pondering what to do, I noticed some very impressive updrafts to the south over the border ranges/Gold Coast region. I decided to head towards the Gold Coast – so I got back on the Warrego Hwy and took the M2, M4, M6 and then finally the M1 down to the Gold Coast. The updrafts were unbelievable!!!
They were forming on the SE change, they were so strong! They were forcing the Cirrus layer around them as it moved through! Quite impressive! It formed a very nice gust front too – which I viewed from the Dreamworld carpark.
Unfortunately the storm weakened as it moved NE, but the gust front made up for it. Besides, it capped off what was an absolutely FANTASTIC four days of chasing! So I certainly couldn’t complain. What can I say? WOW!!! |
