Granite
Belt Lightning Show
I had been waiting for an opportunity to chase after TDU! It had been a quiet period around SE QLD, although the area that Macca (my 2001 TDU chase partner) and I left fired the day we had to come back…and continued to have severe storms for about four days straight! Well, it was bound to happen by Murphy’s Law, but it made the fact that we weren’t getting storms in SE QLD a little worse – like rubbing salt into a wound! Although it was good to get things organized again. I was working on Friday, Friday was going to be the second last storm potential day…from Sunday onwards it looked like to be hot and humid, with a massive cap and upper ridging, with a dry layer just above the surface. Saturday was looking a little dicey, I didn’t want to risk not chasing on the Friday in case Saturday didn’t perform. I had finished work at around 4:30pm, and shot down towards Warwick. A line of storms had formed to the west of the Northern Tablelands in NSW and were moving NE, the best I could have hoped for was lightning as it would be at least 6:30pm until I got to Warwick, and the QLD Sun is notorious for setting in the sky way too early (7pm). I also wasn’t looking forward to the roads on the Saturday before Christmas! The traffic on the M1 was heavy until the M4 turnoff, from then on it was smooth sailing – even the M2 was up to speed, and then out onto the Cunningham Hwy – a perfect run, although I think I just missed the bulk of the traffic!
The anvils to the SW were very nice – very large backshear, the upper winds weren’t overly light either – so there had to be some fairly strong updrafts down there. Some brilliant sunset mammatus occurred on the backsheared anvil from Warwick – but I couldn’t get into a good enough position to photograph (although in hindsight I shouldn’t have been so picky, regardless it would have made a great photo!) From Warwick and with some consultation with Doc, I decided to head down to Stanthorpe. Just out of Warwick I could see lightning to the south, static was almost constant. The CGs were interesting colours, CGs on the eastern side were more white and orange! While CGs to the right were more of a pink and blue colour – perhaps something to do with the moisture as it was dry (DPs around 11-12), but it would have been moister under the storms (there was no precipitation on the eastern side of the storms). I didn’t want to get too close as I wanted to photograph the storms! I found a nice dirt road and was just setting up the tripod when I had a farmer drive up to me. Well, it wasn’t a pleasant experience – he mouthed off a plethora of expletives to me about myself being on his property. I apologized and quickly packed up as he mumbled – I did make mention that I honestly thought it was a public road – it was signposted as one (and a later look at the map marks it as a public road), none the less I was a little annoyed. Most (actually, all) farmers I’ve met so far have been very kind – let alone being told off for an honest mistake! Perhaps what annoyed me the most was that I missed the best of the lightning in trying to spend another 15mins finding another advantage point! Unfortunately there are a lot of trees on the side roads of the Granite Belt (southern Darling Downs) so it made it difficult! I did enjoy another hour or so of lighting though! A gust front pushed through over me – it was difficult to make out due to the dryness, I heard a familiar faint roar from the wind! The wind was whipping up heaps of dust! Whenever there was lightning, the entire area look liked it was covered in smoke there was so much dust blowing around! There was no precipitation though – which made the dust worse! The winds were quite strong, easily 40 knots or so – Alex got a few more branch dents on the side of the car too! I had to do some swerves for a few of them, but it wasn’t severe – just strong winds! I hovered around the edge for a while, watching lightning – it had weakened a lot from the nice CGs it was putting out, it was mostly CC lightning. At around 9pm I decided to grab some dinner at Warwick and head back home – listening to “Carols by Lightning-light!” It was a contenting small (550km) chase…but after what I experienced the following day it hardly made this effort seem worth it! I didn't bother doing many captures for this chase as the lightning on December 22 was phenomenal! |
