Thunder
Downunder 2001!
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We thought that today would be simple – Downs and west the previous, SE QLD the next. But we were in a post-frontal sky the following morning in Dalby with light southerly winds so the trough had moved to our east. We decided to head for Wide Bay, as the trough would probably go through SE QLD too quickly – but Jane, PaulY and Clyve had all left before us (we were running a little late), and they phoned just before we went into a 100km reception hole to say they had SW’lies. We held a group meeting and decided to head back to Dalby (30km) and have a long look at the situation. While the trough looked like it would move through early, an upper trough was over the area and the light southerlies and previous storms and rain meant it wouldn’t dry out too dramatically. There wasn’t really a defined trough as such, although there was a southeasterly surge moving up the coast. We decided to target SE QLD and the Southern Downs to see how we went. We headed to Toowoomba, and then south towards Allora. We had lunch at Toowoomba and watched as storms rapidly developed to our SW in the light, moist southerly winds!
Some great TCU and CJs were going up over the Cunningham and Border Ranges too!
We headed south, I knew of a little road just off the intersection of the two major highways (one for the Downs and one to take you towards SE QLD and Brisbane) so we could sit there if needed and wait until a decision had to be made. However, I had only approached it from the southern side before, and never the northern side – so I said over the CB-R “I think we turn left soon…” Macca looked over at me and said “Where the left turn? The intersection is up ahead” at the same time I slammed on the brakes and wrenched to the left, the back of the car sliding along several metres and Alex making a 90 degree turn from what was originally 100km/h! James and Matt didn’t have enough time to react so kept going straight, but Doc was behind them and saw we had turned so also did a hard left! Well – that’s one way to learn where the turnoff is from another direction!!! James and Matt eventually did a U-Turn and came back and pulled over. We watched for a while and held a discussion whether or not to head west and meet the line of storms to our west (which were putting up a nice overshooting top and had great updrafts!) Or risk heading east and waiting to see what the TCU does in SE QLD. After much debate, we decided to head west for the storms. We headed W about 30km and waited there for a while. The storm had weakened a little, but still didn’t look too bad! We had a few CGs and an OK guster outflow. The rain shafts looked quite heavy though, but the internal structure looked like it was struggling somewhere.
We headed east with the storm, it was putting out strong outflow! I think we recorded 68km/h on the Kestral, but the winds at times were more than that (towards 75km/h), was difficult to stand against the wind, and dust was being picked up ahead! We decided to keep going east – SE QLD was yet to produce much although some of the CJs and TCU had started to precipitate.
We were interested about the prospects of what would happen when the strong outflow from the decaying storms in the Downs hit the TCU on the ranges. We headed east on the Cunningham Hwy and through Cunningham’s Gap and into Aratula. Some storms were developing a few kilometres to the north, I suggested we get on the other side of them – but for that to happen we had to drive through them. We got some torrential rain and poor visibility – not to mention a nice flang in the field next to us beside the road! The road became quite slippery, both myself and James aquaplaned around one of the corners but fortunately got traction again…although some one else wasn’t so lucky, a car had slid off the road just before! We finally got out of the storm and then looked behind, a rather nice guster had formed – it looked rather nice!
As the Cunningham Hwy goes north, you go to the east of Mt Walker, this blocks your view for a short period so I suggested that we go to the west of Mt Walker along some old single lane country roads that I knew (also open speed limited so that was good). The only catch was we had to go west several kilometres towards the storm before heading north – well, it was a close one! The storm was looking quite menacing and we didn’t want to get caught up with it (we also wanted photos and footage of the guster), I swear we beat the storm to the intersection we wanted by a matter of a few hundred metres before flying northwards again towards Rosewood! We stopped every so often when we were ahead of the storm to take footage and photos, and soon we didn’t have to rush too much more – so we stopped watching the guster, which was evolving fairly rapidly.
Unfortunately, the last leg into Brisbane is rather treed in – so we stopped at Amberley for a while to discuss what to do. We had some strange features now with several more storms developing around the periphery of the gustfront due to the outflow kicking up more cells.
A bushfire made the discolouration on one of the storms very interesting, becoming a mustardy-brown colour!
We decided to head into Brisbane and wait the storm out – hoping to see some hail.
We stopped near Redbank and pulled off on the side of the road. We had some very heavy rain and some nice CGs – but otherwise it was slightly disappointing. There was hail and severe winds reported, but we didn’t see any of it! We did nearly witness an accident though as some one else pulled off the road, but they slowed down on the road and then pulled off onto the shoulder, rather than pulling off onto the shoulder and then slowing down! Cars went everywhere as they slammed on their brakes – some swerving into the shoulder or oncoming lane to avoid the person in front of them! And we got it all on video too! After this, we decided to call it a day – as the line was angled in such a way that we wouldn’t be able to head north quick enough to follow it! Report by Anthony Cornelius & Andrew McDonald, all captures by Andrew McDonald |
