Melbourne Storms

February 15, 2002

I was in Melbourne with Matthew Pearce (one of my best friends), we were both attending a Monash weather course for a week and staying with a friend of ours – Andrew McDonald.  We were hoping for at least one storm day, and Friday looked like our best chance for storms.  We had uni in the morning and early afternoon – but the day finished earlier than normal so we were able to chase in the afternoon.

Just after the last lecture, I talked to Robert Goler and we decided to look at radar.  Unfortunately Robert wouldn’t be able to chase, but it was good to have a quick glance of radar!  There was a very nice squall line approaching in the green/pink/red about 100km west of Melbourne.  Matt had to go and buy something before we left, and I was to meet him back at the car.  I ran back to the car, only to look behind me to see him running behind me!  Obviously he was partially excited because not much gets me to run!  I told him what was on radar, and we got onto the Monash Fwy to try and take the Citylink and eventually get into the western suburbs.  I must say, while the freeway is an effective one – I don’t like the tolls at all.  I was on the phone for ten minutes talking to a robot and then eventually got told my transaction didn’t go through!  I wasn’t impressed…but we got to the NW side of Melbourne eventually.

It was dark to our west…but that was it, we were both wondering where the storms were! 

At that same time, three simultaneous CGs struck about 10-15 kilometres to our west out of nowhere!  We continued up along the Calder Fwy and then towards Sunbury where we sat for a while.  We saw a few CGs, but that was it – it was a bit of an anti-climax. 

We got a radar update off some friends who said “Everything was going really well but then collapsed about half an hour ago!”  Well – that was typical, everything died as soon as we got close to it!

We amused ourself watching the Melbourne drivers doing silly things (as was much of the case on the road for the week we were there!)  And also watched some small flash flooding after about 2-3mm of rain…before heading back to Andrew’s place for dinner.