SE QLD Storms

December 29, 2001

I had to work in the afternoon, so unfortunately couldn’t chase – but the day was going to be somewhat of a chance anyway.  However things developed fairly quickly in the afternoon, and just after 4:30pm I was off! 

Some nice storms (in the red) were going to move over into the northern suburbs, so I took off through the city (just missing peak hour traffic) and up through the new inner city bypass (extension of the E3), and into the northern suburbs.  There was some OK mammatus – I headed for a lookout to see what I could see…which wasn’t much!  I was disappointed at how featureless the entire storm was. 

I thought I’d get close to it and see if it looked any better, but as I kept driving towards it I lost site of it…I eventually drove what I thought would take me underneath the storm, and then looked back and thought “Wasn’t there a storm there ten minutes ago?”  I then had a call from Dr Pearce saying “I’ve never seen a storm die so quickly on radar before” to which I replied “That’s ok, I’ve never seen a storm die so quickly in front of me before!”  But a cell had taken off to the south behind the ranges of the Gold Coast…I headed south, but the chances of catching up with it were extremely remote! 

Sure enough, it moved off before I got to it – but it did give some very heavy rain and strong winds – I met up with a friend of mine (Jason Rainforest) on the Gold Coast who chased the storm from where he was, and had some photos of large branches down near a servo.  While driving around I was slightly bemused at swerving for a pot plant in the middle of the road too :)

A bit of a disappointing chase, the moisture thickness was too shallow so things were fairly pulsey, shame I didn't head south instead of north - but it was almost clear to my south when I left!