Thunder
Downunder 2002
December 3, 2002 Back to Thunder Downunder 2002 Chase Reports
Day 14, Monto-Stanthorpe This was a good day – although not without a few incidents! We were feeling much more energized so we shot south through Mundubberra, Dalby and eventually headed to Goondiwindi. Here the temperature was hovering around 41C and hence we didn’t really want to wait outside for too long! We ended up sitting in a little café in a roadhouse with good views to the W and S for a while. Some stuff developed to our E though and we decided to head towards that.
Unfortunately it weakened, but the stuff to our S was taking off so we headed towards Texas.
The storms were mostly pulsing, and after a few stops we found ourselves heading towards Tenterfield with nice storms developing to our S and SE.
Here our first incident occurred with hitting a bird – it ended up snapping the Cb aerial! And our second incident occurred soon after – going along a dirt road it became very rocky and unfortunately we did a tyre! This time the tyre was too far gone to be fixed though so we had to buy a new one (the next day). Needless to say, I think we could have gotten a job at a pitstop at a race track we changed the tyre over so quickly! We ended up setting up the tripod to take video too while we were changing the tyre. We saw some nice lightning to the S and E, the storm probably would have had a nice gustfront on the other side too! It was nice to watch from behind but oh well, these things can happen I guess.
To our advantage though, we did notice a line of storms to our W begin to develop. They looked weak at first, but as dusk arrived there was plenty of lightning! We even saw one power flash with some of the very nice CGs!
We headed north back
up to Texas as the line moved northwards. Unfortunately the rain
began to shroud the area so we couldn’t video or photograph, but we enjoyed
lying down on the road watching the lightning overhead!!! We headed
E from Texas towards Stanthorpe, and this is where we had our third incident
– hitting a kangaroo! Fortunately there was no real damage to the
car, however the numerplate was quite mangled and had a bit of blood on
it. We both saw the kangaroo at the last second as it jumped out
from behind some trees (was a forest area). We booked into a place
at Stanthorpe (at midnight), and I immediately went to bed (just drove
over 1000km during the day!) There was a weak storm to our W and
James was watching that. I was barely asleep for ten minutes though
when I got woken up by a flang! It’s amazing how quickly your energy
can return – and I was outside in the carport of the motel in an instant!
We had some heavy rain and some nice thunder follow – was a fun storm and
was what I used to remember move over us in Brisbane during the better
storm years of the 80’s and early 90’s. It ended what was a fun and
enjoyable (but tiring day), too bad about the incidents but when you chase
I guess those are some of the hazards that you have to put up with.
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