Thunder
Downunder 2001!
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We awoke to cloudy skies in Miles - although there were a few clearings. The library was closed (Sunday) in Miles, as were almost every library in Queensland except for the ones in Brisbane anyway, but a little far to get a proper look of things! A few phone calls revealed that the news was not good, rather a massive area of cloud had developed. This was definately going to make things difficult. We decided to head south on the Leichardt Hwy. We stopped just south of Condamine for a while to watch things. There was some stuff to the distant west, but it was difficult to make out in the cloud. Static was not suggesting anything significant, although apparently lightning tracker wasn't looking too bad to the west! We waited for a while and watched a few updrafts go up and down, but after a while the football was taken out of the car and we played football on the highway! The Leichardt Hwy is the major inland route between the southern and northern half of Australia - so it's a major highway, but still it only resulted us in being stopped every five minutes or so by a passing car or truck. I think one time things got interesting and we saw two vehicles simultaneously! But it was just because one was an oversize and required a smaller car in front of it with an "oversized vehicle ahead" sign - so our excitement rapidly faded. But I do love the vastness and geographic isolation of Australia sometimes - it's such a novelty!!! Some updrafts occurred to our south so we eventually set off a bit further south. Unfortunately, the low level shear was rather strong so anything that had not yet formed properly was going to move very fast - and that's what happened! The updrafts flew along to the east, we tried a connecting road but even taking advantage of an open road, it was still no use. We decided to head towards Gundy (Goondiwindi) and possibly call it quits for the day, there were still some weak storms to the west, and Gundy would put us in position if we needed to go after it. Unfortunately that wasn't to be the case! However we did obverse some significant tree damage about 30km north of Gundy! We had a picnic lunch in Gundy before seeking accomodation. We got a call from Doc who informed us he had just driven through a nice little storm at Inglewood (an hour east of Gundy), and was going to come and meet up with us. We had a quiet night, although James had some trouble trying to work the stove. Lets just say his pasta didn't work. The problem? I do believe the following morning the conversation went something like this... <Macca> "Hey James,
when you cooked your pasta did you take the lid off the stove top?"
Needless to say James didn't let that one down in a hurry :) Report by Anthony Cornelius & Andrew McDonald, all captures by Andrew McDonald |
