Storm after Storm at Redcliffe & 
"The Bridge" Encounter

March 18, 2001

Another rogue heat trough pushed its way towards SE QLD, with a weak upper level trough just sitting ahead of it.  It was enough to push up a few thunderstorms though!  Because of the positioning of the trough (it was a tad too close), it mean that the action would be to the north of Brisbane.  Due to my dislike of chasing north of Brisbane due to forests and ranges, I hadn’t made any certain plans to chase.  However I was watching the north Brisbane area, in case some storms moved off the Glasshouse Mountains region towards the Redcliffe and Caboolture area.

Sure enough – storms started to develop over the Glass House Mountains region, but nothing to the west or south of Brisbane.  Early in the afternoon, it appeared that a few storms would move towards the Redcliffe area.  There was also some development in the bayside suburbs – I decided to go for a drive to have a look.  The bayside development was explosive, but very pulsey.  I decided to ditch the explosive pulse congestus for the storms to the north. 

I made a dash towards Redcliffe, the storms were at times looking quite well structured, although they did look small!  There was some impressive rain feet too!  Unfortunately, I got stuck in a traffic jam on “The Bridge” to Redcliffe** – a car had crashed into the side of the wall.  The accident had just occurred – interestingly, about two minutes as I was driving along the Deagon Deviation, I saw a CG towards the area and my thoughts were “that was near The Bridge!”  So the thought did cross my mind that perhaps the CG hit the bridge (or even the car!)  And frightened the ‘shiver me timbers’ out of some one!

I continued to the north of the Redcliffe Peninsula – it had just moved out to sea before I got there!  Serious, I came to a T-intersection, and to the left was sunny, and to the right I could see the rain curtain, so I turned right and then 10 seconds later the rain curtain had moved on to reveal the ocean!  I found a little lookout and watched, the updrafts on the back end were awesome, there was even a nice twist!  Underneath it was a large wall cloud!!!  I had wondered if this was the same lowering I saw earlier that was a possible wall cloud (capture above) at the time (well it looks interesting). 

I got extremely excited when I saw a narrow, dark column descend from it and I took some video footage!  However, I think it’s just a rain shaft, it lies just behind the wall cloud (although very close together.)

I saw another storm that had moved towards Redcliffe from the west, I knew I could intercept this one even if I just stayed put!  There was no features in this storm, but I did get some torrential rain!  After the storm had moved on, I took some footage of cars going through a flooded road.  The storm had given some lightning strikes within a couple of kilometres, however the rain was too heavy to hear the strikes.

The stormed moved in exactly the same direction and path as the previous!  I sat at the same lookout watching beautiful updrafts go up out to sea on the back of the storm. 

There was a bit of a lull after this, but another storm moved through from the WNW, this one had a little more structure to it – it had a weak gust front, but it was rather green/yellow. 

I wanted to get on its back end and follow it back through to Redcliffe, unfortunately it moved faster than I had estimated it to do, and I got caught in the storm.  Once again, rain was torrential – traffic was a crawl on Deception Bay Rd, and at times there were some gusty winds that made visibility even worse.  I ended up finding my way onto the onramp of the Bruce Hwy – smart move considering I was going to have to merge onto one of our busiest highways in low visibility.  I approached with caution, but could soon make out everyone’s lights – no one was moving!  The storm had caused traffic to come to a standstill, so that was easily solved.

I wasn’t able to get back to Redcliffe in time to see the storm as it went out to sea, no more storms were developing so I had to head back home.  An enjoyable afternoon of storms in the area though!  Just fun to get out and about in the local area, it’s amazing what driving for half an hour can mean (the difference between blue skies, and thunderstorms.)
 

** For those wondering, "The Bridge" is a term I coined to the bridge that links the Redcliffe Peninsula to the NE parts of Brisbane.  It's a joke between Ben and I, as I believe it is a very narrow, flimsy and cheap bridge, as they never built the other lane on the bridge!  However, it is apparently the longest bridge in the Southern Hemisphere running for several kilometres!