Thunder
Downunder 2001!
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Today was one of the most up and down days I’ve ever had! But it was worth it with a magnificent prize at the end of it all! We started out in Gundy – debating where to go. We talked with a few people and decided to make a start for Moree, around 120km south of us, we made an early move before the library in Gundy had opened and we thought that we could drop into the met office at Moree for a quick visit. We headed down – we tried the library but it was closed due to a fire alarm drill thing – or something. We decided to go to the met office then – we talked to the observer for a little, he was quite busy at this stage so we couldn’t stay too long. We had a quick look at the satpic and obs – discussed the recent storms and some damage, and then the five of us all bought BoM 2002 weather calendars before leaving. We headed back into town to have a quick look at the net before making a final decision. Our concern was that the cloud to our NW would move over the area, it was partly sunny over us and about 28/20 – but there was a larger clear area back to the north in South Queensland which was looking rather lucrative! Our area would most probably get storms, but after much discussion – we decided to head north again into QLD, not before stopping to witness some massive TCU though nearby!
Some TCU in the morning - much debate was held over whether they were located in QLD or NSW! From Gundy (our excuse, we drove a 250km return trip to visit the met office and buy some calendars), we headed towards Inglewood. There was stuff to our south and some developing storms to the north – all were rather weak and pulsey. From Inglewood we watched a little – the decisions were difficult, it had become cloudy again – but we were getting rumbles of thunder just to our northwest from a weak storm. We decided to head north along a road – the map suggested it would be unsealed part of the way – but it ended up being sealed. It was the road to Millmeran (about 40-50km north of Inglewood). The storm was tending northwards generally, some eastward propagation also though – it was weak, but it did produce some rain feet.
It was kind of cool watching the storm though – we were sitting at the base of this small hill and it was raining just a few kilometres away. Our cars were on a dirt patch – it was soft, but not too bad (although we had to keep an eye on things to make sure the cars didn’t sink too much) – they didn’t, fortunately. But we heard some water gushing down – sure enough, our cars soon had a stream surrounding them! Nothing major, only a few inches deep. Unfortunately, Doc was on the other side of the stream when it started – he tried to take one giant leap over it but ended up putting his foot into a very soft patch of mud instead! His shoes ended up being covered in mud! We left the area crossing the small stream (it was a novelty I thought!) Stopping 500m down the road – we didn’t see it before due to some trees blocking the view to the southeast, but a storm with a massive flanking line developed to the southeast! This later became a supercell near Warwick, there was no point in us heading for it as we wouldn’t have caught up with it.
We persisted with our storm – a little down, the potential was rather large for today and there wasn't a great deal happening near us! And we wondered if we should have stayed around Moree or not and what was going on around the place. We continued northwards with the storm – it eventually produced a few CGs and a small guster – it picked up a little, and I think all of us were thinking at this stage whether it’d be worth persisting with it and whether we should just stop in the next town (Millmerran) for the night. We stopped outside the Millmerran power station (impressive piece of work! Looks like something from Star Wars), the CGs were picking up a little and it was starting to develop more prominent rain feet.
The guster, while small – was persisting, and it was developing a RFB to the north of the storm, the first today. There was some inflow being drawn into the RFB, and the CGs continued to get more frequent – it was definitely starting to get a little more interesting! We pottered north again and stopped – the storm was taking on an entirely different structure! Weak showers around it had collapsed now, and there was a noticeable change in wind and low level cloud direction into the storm – the storm did not look photogenically impressive yet – but CGs were becoming more frequent – and the RFB had now developed a lowering.
The storm was quite close to us – there were some loud booms of thunder, much more excited we shot through Millmeran – just as we were getting outside there were numerous CGs striking the town. We stopped a few kilometres outside of Millmerran – oh my God, what a sight!!!
It was growing into a monster, deep navy blue and greenly tinged rain curtains – large RFB with a small wallcloud had developed on the north, and a nice guster was developing on the southern and eastern edge. We didn’t stay for too long before shooting off along the Gore Hwy to the northeast towards Pittsworth – we stopped another 10km down the road, magnificent guster! A funnel descended from behind the guster too to top it all off!
I was watching CGs striking through it in the rear vision mirror – stopping again for a quick photo session, the storm had slowed down a little – but you were so excited you just wanted to get in the car, drive a few kilometres down the road and then stop as fast as you could so you could see it again!
I was totally in awe – the way we had followed this weak storm for over an hour, to have it evolve into such a beast! Massive bands of stratocu were feeding into it and curving into the main base from the rotation! We stopped just south of Pittsworth on a dirt road to take photos until the outflow from the storm (rather cold, and the dirt was being picked up from the road).
We stopped again just outside of Pittsworth for more photos and video…once again we had to leave soon though, but just as we were about to leave Matt yelled out “TORNADO TORNADO!!!” And pointed to a large cone that was descending out from behind the guster to our ESE – jumping out of the car (nearly forgetting to put the handbrake on), we videoed and took a few snaps – it was still a small distance (10km) away so we had to zoom in a bit, it lasted about a minute or so before losing sight of it.
We continued along the highway…only minutes into that we were driving by an electricity transformer that suddenly blew up just as we were driving by! We only got the last bit on video, but there was an explosion and then sparks were flying out followed by a fair bit of smoke. A CG must have struck just down the line and overloaded it!
We continued along towards Toowoomba – stopping for video again, after the tornado though it began to weaken slightly and become more like a squall line. In Toowoomba, some showers and storms had already gone through there and gave some local flash flooding (half of the left hand lane was covered in water on some of the major roads). From Toowoomba, we actually went northwest – the supercell had now turned into a squall line, and it was going to take too long to get down the range before it went over, so we stayed on the north and watched the storm to our south and also some cells to the north of us. The storms to the north were quite impressive! They were kicking up a lot of dust too.
We followed the Warrego Hwy towards Dalby – many of the floodways had water lapping up onto the road – but only one had water over the road, but in the rain it was difficult to see it. We were in the lead car, so I warned the motorists coming the other way for the next 800m or so by turning off my lights and flashing my high beams at them 5 or 6 times to warn them to slow down (it was deeper on their side and they’d need to move onto the wrong side of the road to pass properly). We also found out that Jane, Clyve and PaulY were also heading for Dalby – so we had arranged to stay with them! We met up and got some KFC and talked for a while, before calling it a night (all of us very tired). We were told though of a large band of lightning and storms to our west – we decided to go to sleep and wake up a little later and see how it went. But just as we were going to sleep we had a band of squally rain move over! No lightning or thunder…just squally rain, winds coming in from the east!!! Very weird stuff – normally you’d expect westerly or SW’ly winds. The winds got up to 20-25knots at times – was cool to watch! I had set the alarm for 1.5hrs later…it went off, I got up, turned it off and went back to sleep – I was totally tired! But apparently the line died before it got to Dalby (probably a good thing!) So we didn’t miss out! Report by Anthony Cornelius & Andrew McDonald, all captures by Andrew McDonald |
