Soaring Temperatures and Record DPs 
Give Pulse Storms

January 12, 2002

Hot and humid weather had continued for several weeks now – it wasn’t just hot through, it was incredibly, stupidly, ludicrously, oppressively, annoyingly and horrendously hot!  Night times were only getting down to the mid 20s with humidity levels near 100%.  But the moisture layer was very thin, a weak westerly stream giving way to a semi-permanent seabreeze on the coast due to the hot inland temperatures, sometimes frequenting the 40s.

Meanwhile, the Victorians were shivering – so a chasing friend of mine came up to enjoy the heat and humidity of Brisbane!  He stayed with me for a few days, and stayed elsewhere on other days.  On the Saturday, we had decided to have a video session with a few other people to watch video footage.  But that quickly gave way to chasing as large TCU exploded to the north and began to develop into storms!

Chris and I headed up north along the Bruce Hwy, there was a weak convergence line moving up the coast.  The chances of something lasting long enough to chase it was remote due to the low moisture depth, but still we wanted to get as close as possible to the storms!

The temperature fluctuated between 35C in the seabreeze to 47C out of the seabreeze – but we were getting a lot of heat off the road and from other cars!  Cars were on the side of the road every few kilometres, the heat and humidity too much for them and many had overheated.  My car was also getting quite hot, but only slightly warmer than normal so it wasn’t a cause for concern!

The updrafts continued to explode – one even had a nice twist in it!  Unfortunately, as expected – it all collapsed after about two hours of pulses.  We never really got close to anything, but we did see some nice updrafts which was good!