Thunder
Downunder 2002
December 1, 2002 Back to Thunder Downunder 2002 Chase Reports
Day 12, Maryborough-Gladstone We awoke to overcast conditions which was disappointing originally, however it ended up being mostly low cloud and therefore it’d be likely to burn off during the day as it warmed up. I went to the bakery in the morning to pick up some bread – at 7:30am it was already a steamy 28/24! We wanted to head north relatively early as it would be easier to catch development to our south than it would be to our north. Storms looked to be a little more inland today (but still reach the coast), just not do what the previous day did with storms exploding when they came within 10km of the coast. The lifted indicies were nothing short of impressive either with LI’s dropping down to –10 west of the central Queensland coast. We headed north up towards Gladstone, our target area was the legendary Capricornia. We decided to refuel and get lunch at Calliope – a small town just west of Gladstone. We ordered some lunch just in time to watch the first storms begin to develop to our south. We ate lunch (it was unbearably hot and humid!) and then decided to find a lookout. We saw a small hill that had an old track lead up to it – it was very rocky though so we took it very slowly.
It was extremely steep – I had to engage low gear to get up it! It was an awesome 360 degree view at the top though! The storms to our south were looking very nice – we discussed our options. Things were going to develop in our area in the coming hours, but the convection in our region looked like it still had a long way to go yet! For this reason we decided to head south and get the stuff about an hour south of us first before heading north again and get the later developing storms.
It looked very impressive to our south with big storms (one in particular) absolutely exploding! It produced and extensive anvil with some nice mammatus but for some reason it weakened afterwards. It was still a storm, just nowhere as impressive. It was strange as it was so explosive originally and then it just became sub-standard with the odd nice updraft, but nothing else.
I’m still not sure why it weakened! After waiting for a while to see if it’d regain to its former glory we decided to head back towards Calliope. We then headed WSW along the Dawson Hwy towards Biloela where another line of storms were developing. The entire sky was covered with anvil cirrus by now!
We got close to the ranges and there was one particular storm that looked quite impressive – it had plenty of CGs and developed a small mesocyclone!
We later found it that it was a right moving supercell (it was going SE), which was the worst direction it could have gone! If only it went in a “normal” direction (ie NE), we could have chased it along the highway. It also had some nice hail shafts and we got a few small bits of hail as it glided by just to our south. We decided to head back ENE towards Calliope as it looked as if a line was developing and thought it might turn into a squall line situation. I couldn’t believe how much speed it had gained though! I knew what speed we were doing – the actual squall line (ie wind change) was moving out at a good 80-90km/h!
The winds were very strong along the boundary…mostly 80km/h, but may have gusted into severe at stages. At times it would have been dangerous to stand outside because of all of the branches and debris flying through the air! It even became hazardous on the road to drive, because the winds were buffeting against the car and pushing it across the road. That in itself was ok…but we were approaching other cars coming the other way, and you could see we were wobbling in and out of our lane, and they were too from the winds! It was quite hair-raising! There was plenty of dust being kicked up also, and we were continually teased with what we knew was a spectacular gustfront developing. However we only got to see the inside – we just couldn’t catch up, the road needed to be more direct. In the end the gustfront moved well ahead of the storm. We stopped in Calliope and waited for the storm to come over…it gave some lovely CGs and some brief heavy rain, but not what we were expecting/hoping for!
In the end we decided to head back west and see what else there was. After some bursts of heavy rain, we came to a clearing – it was hazy to the west but there wasn’t anything there. However there was a magnificent anvil shield spreading behind the storm and it looked quite spectacular! |
