Awesome
Day of Supercells for
I had originally thought that the best target area would have been the southern Darling Downs and Northern Tablelands, but I was also cautious as to not venture too far from SE QLD. I ventured towards the Warwick region, and pottered around for several hours waiting for something to develop. I had left too early – development was not going to start until late, however I had thought that the ranges would start to go off around 1-2pm.
The air though was drying out rapidly near Warwick, I was under the influence of a W to NW’ly wind, and decided that if anything was going to form in the next few hours that it’d be closer to the coast. I headed to Boonah and went to the lookout – there were weak CJ’s going up on the Cunningham Ranges but these did not do very much. I did see a rather curious looking curl in a cloud though!
I was watching a cell in NE NSW, it was near the Kyogle region. It was originally moving northeast, however I noticed that the cell had changed direction somewhat. I was just able to see some of the base features – and I thought that it was moving more northwards now.
There was one road that went towards the south, and then eastwards towards Rathdowney. The views are horrible but I decided to give it a chance. I flew south and took some video of lowerings. Just before the main forest area on the ranges, I saw a hill with road that went up it. I followed the road up to the hill and decided to watch the storm from a distance – as this would be the best advantage point that I’d get! I thought that there was rotation in the storm, it was quite curved and there was an interesting outflow region forming over the ranges.
But I wasn’t quite sure as I could not actually see it physically rotating. I saw an interesting lowering reaching the ground, but it's quite difficult to tell if there was rotation in it or not in the lowering. However, after reviewing the video tape many times, and thinking back to it - I am fairly confident this was a tornado. Sometimes scud lowerings can look like tornadoes, however the way this formed and disippated was unlike scud, it occured too quickly - it was analogous to the rapid increase and decrease in the condensation of a tornado funnel touching the ground.
The CG interval was quite long, but whenever there were CG’s there would be two or three bolts simultaneously!
The first mesocyclone died and the storm went through a slightly weakening phase. It re-organised itself and then formed another mesocyclone! This meso was actually stronger then the first, you could physically see it rotating! A nice funnel cloud also developed underneath the meso!
The hailshafts were incredible, it produced a nice hail-bow over the Rathdowney region. As the storm continued to move northwards I decided to head east to try and follow it to Beaudesert. The updrafts were truly spectacular! However I was inhibited getting to Rathdowney in good timing due to the debris across the roads! Branches and leaves littered the road, at times I was slowing down to 40km/h (100km/h zone) just because of all of the leaves littering the road I was losing traction! I had never quite seen anything like it! The town of Rathdowney was a mess, branches and small trees down everywhere! I continued north along the Mt Lindsay Hwy towards Beaudesert, continually dodging branches off the road. It was actually dangerous – oncoming traffic would come, and there would be a branch on one side of the road – it was obvious some one would have to hit it, and occasionally the branch flew into the other lane. I wanted to get out of the debris area as quickly as possible – but there was only one way out! A barn roof had been torn off and thrown across the road, and there was also roofing damage to houses in some area with iron being partially ripped off.
I actually had chaser convergence with James just south of Beaudesert! However the cell had died incredibly quickly! We could see further storms forming to the south, we decided that we’d head to an advantage point just outside of Beaudesert and watch. And watch we did, as an absolutely brilliant anvil backsheared to our south, with crisp mammatus on its edges! We also were able to witness a spectacular sunset from orange anvils to beautiful crepuscular rays from TCU to our west!
Storms were going to be drifting onto the Gold Coast hinterland soon. We decided to sit and watch what we would hope to be an impressive lightning show. I went back into Beaudesert quickly to refuel, and also got dinner for both of us at McDonalds. We sat (well, stood actually!) and watched as several cells spanning from our east to southeast gave 2-3 flashes of lightning a second! It was certainly spectacular. Every so often a powerful CG would occur often pulsing many times that would temporarily cease lightning before it started all over again! One of the interest things that I noticed is that if you run the footage in fast forward, that towards the end when the lightning lost frequency (only a flash every few seconds), that the lightning became sympathetic. A flash would occur on the northern most cell, then another would form on the next most northern cell and so forth until the southern most cell had discharged. Then this cycle would repeat itself!
Unfortunately as great as it was, and while there was the possibility of more stuff forming – I had to be home at around 9:30-10pm due to family commitments and I had to depart (detouring through Boonah incase something intensified and happened over the region!) I got back home and watched as a line of storms to the south was coming into the far reaches of Brisbane local! I phoned James who said he was seeing five flashes of lightning a second! I desperately tried to shuffle around a few people in my family, and finally successfully did so (much to their disgust!) and headed back out. I wasn’t able to head back down south, however I headed towards Sunnybank lookout to watch the lightning and line of storms move through. The lightning was phenomenal, I was seeing CG’s on the horizon lightning up a massive shelf cloud, and there were anvil crawlers ahead of the actual thunderstorm itself!!!
I headed towards Beaudesert Rd as the storm neared, my initial intention to follow the line of storms north on Beaudesert road, however this eventually didn’t work out! I got wanted to sit it out at a service station, however I was unable to find a service station with adequate roofing! I was still driving northwards with the storm when the guster rolled over me – it gave very strong winds (40kn or so!) Enough to blow down branches off trees. While stopped at the traffic lights, with my foot on the brake – a stronger gust of wind came through and actually pushed my car forward!!! It was slightly uncanny. I decided to head back east and watch lightning out to sea at Cleveland Point – driving through Wishart the entire area was blacked out. I could still see impressive lightning and CG’s to the east and northeast as I continued towards the Capalaba area. Large sections of Capalaba and Cleveland were blacked out – it was eerie driving through areas which I was normally used to driving through full of lights! Then, while driving I saw something just in front of me - $#($#^$ tree!!! The brakes went to a screeching halt as I narrowly avoided running into a tree across the road. I thanked my lucky stars and continued on, just while speeding up again I was thinking that I had to be very careful in case there was more debris, several seconds after @($)($& tree!!! Instead of screeching the brakes, I swerved instead into the next lane! After this, I sat well below the speed limit – Old Cleveland Rd was littered with trees over the road and large branches down. The road into Cleveland was actually badly flooded – the water was not running, but quite deep – 1st gear stuff. It was becoming a major hassle to see the rest of the lightning show!!! I did eventually get there though and watched a fairly spectacular lightning display! However it was not as good as earlier in the night. Unfortunately a bunch of yahoos rocked up at Cleveland Point (people who I didn’t feel comfortable being near me while holding a video camera in one hand, and camera on my shoulder), so I decided to leave and head back home. I saw more showers and storms developing to the west, but being extremely tired decided to head off to bed (now 1am). Sleeping was difficult – I kept getting woken up by rumbles of thunder during the night! In particular around 4am, some very nice loud booming rumbles and flashes every couple of seconds to the north! I was awoken again at 6:30am by more thunder. That was it! I had had enough and got up and looked at radar. At that point mum walked into the study asking what the hell I was making moaning noises from as I saw several thunderstorms already in the red to my south! The BoM had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for these at 5:55am! I raced to get changed, then jumped into the car and headed off to – well, I hadn’t worked it out yet! But I decided to go to Carindale Shopping Centre as I could see a very nice guster coming over on the horizon.
The odd CG struck ahead in front of the guster. I took photos and videos from the roof top carpark, then decided to head a little further north to try and get in position to shelter at a service station at get some footage. I took shelter at the corner of Creek and Wynnum Rd at Cannon Hill. The storm was just starting to pass over now and was giving very heavy rain and some nice winds (20-25kn). Soon after I pulled into the servo the first hail started coming down. Only small, just under 1cm! But it was making a fairly loud noise on the roof, and winds were gusting to 30kn or so! Several nice flangs accompanied this. The hail did not last for long, but several minutes later more hail fell, slightly larger too. A centimetre or more – it was hitting the concrete and breaking. Within seconds of it hailing, my quiet little service station shelter became a refuge for over a dozen cars from the hail! I wasn’t happy – they were blocking my view!!! A nice flang took out the power temporarily – this same flang may have been the same strike that fried my surge protector on the computer back home! (I was only several km away if that as the storm moves). The storm eventually moved on – James Harris said a few more cells were forming just to my south so I headed back south. I passed through two showers that both gave small hail! A sign of the instability present. I made my way to the Sunnybank carpark – I decided to sit on the rooftop and watch for a while. The storms to my north looked quite nice, but these would be unreachable, especially after traffic was so heavy already with thunderstorms moving through and roads being flooded and power being knocked out in several areas.
This concluded the Jan 17 chase that went on into January 18! All up fantastic!!! It’s just a shame though that I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I wanted to due to family. Oh well! I was still incredibly happy with what I saw – what an event! |
