Absolutely Spectacular NSW Supercells!
I was down in Sydney for a week doing some work, I may have had to work Friday – but was told on Thursday that I wasn’t required the following day, so I was able to chase! It was certainly looking good – a strong upper level cold pool moving north, with moist northerlies at the surface being dragged down to intersect. Shear was nothing short of awesome – and the system was extremely dynamic! The only problem was where to chase? My original thoughts lay to chase Sydney – but everyone told me I couldn’t chase there, it was impossible to do so with the roads. “Right, then, I’ll go south then.” To then get told I can’t chase either! So then I said “How about the Blue Mountains region?” “Nope.” Ok then…the Hunter? “Oh yeah, the Hunter is good to chase in!” (Well, I must say that my impression of chasing territory is somewhat to be desired given how disappointing the Hunter was to chase), but who needs great chasing area when you have absolutely mindblowing brilliant storms!? I had organised to chase with a good friend of mine (Terry) – I wanted to catch up with him before I headed down to Melbourne the following day with Matt Pearce to attend the Monash Summer Weather School. I had to write a couple of reports in the morning for work – but once I did that I picked up Terry in Roseville from St Ives and then headed north on the freeway. We took the Cessnock exit as it’s quicker to go through Cessnock to get onto the New England Hwy than it is to go the way the signs tell you to. A storm had developed to our south – it looked nice, but there was also CJs to the NW of that which I thought might develop in a more pleasant area to chase in. A call from Doc (Matt Pearce) indicated the storm was strongly in the red – it didn’t look like it at that stage, but about ten minutes later it was taking on magnificent structure!!!
We jockeyed for position around the trees and discussed whether or not we’d make it if we headed back down the freeway. Some photos, footage and a quick bite of a sandwich and we headed back towards the freeway. The storm was moving SE – but from the angle I was watching it, I didn’t think it was going too far south, so thought we had a real chance! We headed south until the next exit, then headed west – we were getting HUGE drops on the windscreen from the RFB – quite an impressive one at that.
The anvil was spreading out overhead, but even as it spread out it was keeping a very cumuli appearance to it – I was quite impressed! Normally they tend to become quite wispy looking if they are blown by strong shear.
We headed near a town and then stopped for a bit to try and get some CGs on video – we got a few, but they occurred in between frames on the video! Soon the drops were getting massive – I was reciting to Terry how excited I was at the possibility of large hail! Sure enough, the first stones started falling – about one centimetre, but they didn’t get any bigger unfortunately! While it was hailing, Terry decided he had to go the toilet – “The toilet!? It’s hailing outside!” None the less, that didn’t stop Terry!!! Quite funny I thought (as per a few bellows of laughter on the video camera while videoing the hail). The storm appeared to be moving rapidly east, so we decided to head east too and get onto the freeway, and eventually head north. I got lost though and took the wrong turn, so it took about an extra five minutes to get onto the freeway.
One of the updraft bases was just starting to dump down as we got onto the freeway. The rain wasn’t heavy as such – but because we were driving so quickly into the massive drops it seemed heavier! As we emerged out of the rain it stopped suddenly – I glanced over to the east “OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE #@*(&@ WALL CLOUD!!!” There was a massive beast of a wall cloud hanging underneath to the main base! Only to have it go behind (what became a frequent frustration) trees!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t get over how many trees lined the road. It was about five minutes until the next turnoff…still with trees.
The short glimpses I got of the wall cloud showed intense rotation – I could see the cloud moving faster than the car, while ragged bits of scud on the other side were FLYING the other way (combination of rapid motion & car forward speed). We did find a small clearing about 15 minutes later on a farmer’s property to which the wallcloud had weakened substantially, because the storm had gone out to sea.
We later found out that the original storm actually split, and we got the northern/left mover – but apparently the right mover looked even nicer – I would have loved to have seen that!!! All this and it wasn’t even 3pm yet. We tried to find a lookout to the ocean, but the storms were really moving rapidly – later to be confirmed up to 90-100km/h!!! No wonder we never had a chance of catching up properly once we got near the storm.
There was a bit of a lull again, we decided to head west and see if anything would develop. Things were looking…well, dead! Storms to the NE in the Mid North Coast were firing nicely, while storms (supercells) to the south were also firing.
Normally the Hunter fires later than the Sydney region, so it was a patience game. I got a call from Matt Smith who had just finished work at 4pm. He said he would come out and meet us – we met up for a late lunch at Cessnock. A line of stratocumuluogestus was to the west, but it was really struggling and was needing something else. Well, it looked like it was struggling anyway – that may not have been the case! Five minutes later when we came out of McDonalds, there was glaciation! And ten minutes later, there were BEAUTIFUL backshearing anvils, boiling and exploded updrafts, mammatus, knuckles – you name it!!! I was following Matt, and we could also see a shelf cloud to the west – talk about explosive development!!!
I had nearly given up on the thoughts of more storms for the day. We continued on to the southeast trying to get views and stopping periodically for photos – it was just amazing to watch!!!
We got into this treed area, and I thought I saw a funnel near the wallcloud region, but then it went back behind trees. Terry must have seen something, as going back through the video he had videoed part of it in the car! While looking at the sky, I saw Matt slam on his brakes…I wasn’t watching properly, so then slammed on my brakes and then pulled in front of him. He was pointing to the funnel (now weakening!)
But there was still strong rotation in a prong-like area just to the NW of the main wall cloud region!!
We decided to keep on going – the storm was flying! I half jokingly-half seriously said to Matt “Becareful that you don’t drive into a tornado!” But there ended up being no threat at that…somewhat windy roads and a storm moving at the same speed as you (if not faster) certainly doesn’t mix! And before we knew it, the storm had moved out to sea!
We pulled up near Swansea and wondered whether anything else could develop. We could see some storms about 40-50km to our northwest. We contemplated heading for them, but then decided to wait where we were as they’d probably move on top of us in about 20-30mins! Sure enough they did…we got some nice CGs (a good flang too!) and some heavy rain. But it was all over in a few minutes.
One last stratocumulogestus became lightning active, before it was clear blue sky to our west.
We found out that Jimmy was in the Hunter, so we decided to meet up with him, and saw a nice sunset on the way to Newcastle.
We went to the Newcastle Leagues Club to grab some dinner and have a chat about the recent events, before we went home – complimented by some nice lightning to the distant east heading back down to Sydney on the freeway! I was surprised in Sydney when I had difficulty trying to get fuel – all of the service stations were shut!!! Normally most of them are open 24hrs in Brisbane, but I did get fuel (thankfully), before getting back home just after midnight, to try and head down to Melbourne later on that day… |
