Thunder
Downunder 2002
December 1, 2002 Back to Thunder Downunder 2002 Chase Reports
Day 12, Maryborough-Gladstone 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!
The Sun eventually came out and then shone behind the storm and gave a brilliant double rainbow over the fields! This was to be the start of perhaps the best sunset both of us had ever witnessed!!!
As the Sun continued to set the mammatus behind the storm became more noticeable…the sky was full of it! But it has a beautiful orange-golden glow from the sun setting behind! With the rainbow still in sight too…it became a case where you had to keep looking around. But if that wasn’t enough, there was still another line of storms to our NW that were moving generally ESE or SE.
They had produced an awesome roll cloud that became detached and moved over…it looked awesome!!!
Even when it passed over us it still looked just as spectacular! (Normally when they pass over they don’t look as good as they used to).
This was still happening during the sunset mammatus and rainbow too! What a magnificent sight! But there was still more! There were CCs and crawlers going across the anvil overhead too!!!
Eventually when the Sun set we ended up heading towards Gladstone to try and get an offshore lightning show. There wasn’t a huge amount of lightning, but the crawlers!!! Oh…how spectacular!!! Many lasting a couple of seconds (and sometimes there were multiple or return crawlers!!!) It was fantastic!!! We tried to stop and take photos, however they didn’t really come out. It as difficult because the wind was blowing away form the storm and there was light rain at the time. So the camera lenses kept getting wet and it was difficult to stop that from happening but oh well…still got most of the crawlers on video at least! I've made some frame by frame captures and converted them into avi format...click on the lightning strike to get the AVI movie of it:
We eventually found a motel for the night in Gladstone…but just when we thought it was over and having dinner, another storm developed to our north. Our motel was on a hill and pretty much had views all over Gladstone! So we were able to watch the lightning..it wasn’t spectacular but it was still nice to watch over dinner. What a day!!! |
