Border Range Supercell Produces Golfball Hail

October 9, 2002

Tuesday night had a nice feel to it, a nice northerly and a bit of humidity…still a little cool, but nice!  The sky eventually became quite overcast with Stratocumulus overnight from midnight onwards which was quite encouraging!  But the N’ly stopped at around 3am…not a huge thing, although at the time I was hoping it would kick up again.  The morning warmed up quickly, getting into the mid 20s quickly in the morning and the northerly very quickly began to kick up again (partly due to the seabreeze).

A friend of mine had always wanted to come stormchasing with me…thinking today might be a good day I decided to bring her along to see what she thought of it.  I had to pick her up from Bracken Ridge, and I left my place at 11:45am (after finishing work at 11am).  I got there around 12:15 and we grabbed some lunch and fuel – I had originally decided to head out towards Warrill View, but some developing weak showers and storms were making that decision quite difficult!  To the SW all I could see was flat CJs, while around me I already had some possible developing storms.  After having a debate against myself, I decided to stick to the original idea as I wanted to play the SE change.  Fifty minutes later at Ipswich I was getting quite concerned that the only development was to the north, but when we got onto the Cunningham Hwy I was quite relieved to start seeing some convection developing on the Border Ranges! 

We got Warrill View at around 2pm and we waited there for a little bit.  It was quite warm, the thermo had been sitting on 32C.  There was a light to moderate N/NE’ly blowing, it didn’t feel overly humid but it certainly wasn’t dry either!

There were some CJs to the west and south…none of them were really doing anything which was disappointing.  We waited for about 40 minutes before eventually deciding to head south towards Boonah.  There seemed to be some weak cells in NE NSW and I thought that it might be our best chance and I was hoping something might develop on the actual trough and change.

Things began to look a little nicer at Boonah, the storm wasn’t that far away (40km or so) and it didn’t seem to be moving that fast.  However it was throwing up the odd nice updraft on the northern flank which got me interested.  I wanted it to track NE’ly so it would go into chasable territory (that and if it did that chances are it would have meant that it was a lot stronger). 

I got a call from Jonty at the Bureau and we discussed it briefly…he mentioned that they were watching the storm as it was possibly developing at the intersection of the S’ly changes and the NE’ly winds but they weren’t sure whether it would end up being south of that boundary.  Joey and I headed just out of Boonah by about 7-8km and stopped again, on the northern flank a massive updraft had exploded!  Although by the time we had stopped it didn’t look quite as good. 

We shot eastwards to Beaudesert and sat out a few kilometers west of the town just before the trees started.  We could see the band of rain off to the S and SE with the main updraft region to our SSW.  The updraft region was looking interesting at this time, there was a small inflow region into the storm, and it had developed good outflow.  A fibrous but otherwise relatively solid (for the strong 300mb shear) anvil was spreading well out towards the east, although the storm itself was not overly high (35,000 or so). 

I spoke to MB and discussed the situation with him, he said that the storm had intensified on radar (as it had appeared to visually) and there was a nice core of red.  He said that it had supercellular characteristics on radar and was now moving NNE (also noticeable).  But it was moving slowly…and the other strange thing is that we hadn’t even seen a CG from the storm yet!  Although we were getting rumbles of thunder constantly rolling into one another.  There was a nice inflow band developing into the storm, it was beginning to stretch several kilometers out to the NNW!  A quick word to Jonty about the structure and he replied with the storm also having supercellular characteristics on radar!

I was amazed at the lack of lightning though…the rain curtain remained within 5km of us the entire time and we never even saw so much as a flash (although heard the continuous rumbling!)  Eventually I told Joey that we should only sit in the car, to which she replied with “but there’s no lightning!” 

But I just wanted to be safe as we were quite close and I didn’t want the first CG we saw to be within 50m of us while standing in the open (or worse…)  I think I jinxed the CG thing though…as I promised Joey that she’d see at least one CG.  Did she see it? 

Well…going on, a nice gustfront developed infront of the storm!  Although due to the poor contrast it was difficult to see it, even the captures don't really do it justice because on the video you can actually see it looks quite nice! 

We decided to head west a bit just to get a better look at some of the lowerings underneath the main base.  They weren’t doing anything spectacular, but I was thinking of taking a road south just west of us.  That was the original plan, but the we got overtaken by rain…originally just rain.  Then it was torrential rain with strong gusty (60-70km/h) winds.  A minute or two after the hail started…just a little at first but then just bucket loads of it!  It was probably the heaviest hail I’ve been in, it was blanketing everything even before it was being washed away!  The noise was DEAFENING!!!  Joey got quite scared…I must say even I was taken back by the ferocity, there was debris falling all over the car and all over the road from the wind and hail!!! 

The stones were mostly 1-2cm but some were up to 3cm…these were solid and jagged though…not soft hail!  I wanted to report it to the Bureau and also phone MB.  Both of them I could hardly hear them on the phone and in the end I know with MB at least I just told him a whole pile of things and had a muffled response back that I couldn’t understand over the hail and then hung up!  The winds were gusty originally but then eased off a bit (but it was never calm!)  This continued for around 5-6 minutes before the hail let-off briefly.  I decided that I’d prefer to be east and trying to get north of the storm – that and get out of the hail region!  Just going a couple of hundred metres westwards to find a place to turn around the hail actually got slightly bigger (a lot of 3cm’s), and I briefly wondered if they would get even bigger further west but didn’t really want to find out (3cm is the maximum size hail you really want on your car if you don’t want too many dents!)  He headed east, very strong winds and heavy rain greeted us getting out of the NE side of the storm.  The rain eventually let off and it was only drizzle at Beaudesert.  We headed northwards, but the storm was heading NNE and was going to intersect the highway.  For some reasons the traffic lights in Beaudesert took half an eternity to change – I was getting impatient, but even then we got stuck behind slow drivers going out of Beaudesert.  Eventually we got caught in the southeastern side of the storm which brought heavy rain and gusty winds once again.  Very soon though the winds strengthened tending 70-80km/h with gusts nearing 90km/h and the hail started again!  Initially it was pea size but it was gradually getting bigger…

The hail got up to 1-2cm once again, although there was not as much hail as before (mostly rain and hail mixed in, but still a lot!)  Visibility was quite poor and the highway collectively slowed to about 40km/h before everyone started pulling off…I really wanted to head further north and made a judgment that since the storm itself was moving quite slowly, if we were to continue we should be able to go through. 

I was concerned about the larger hail, but I thought that the main updraft region would still be a bit to our west and we were sitting on the eastern edge of the hail (which appeared to be the case given what happened later).  Visibility continued to decline though…very soon we were crawling along at 20-30km/h with 2cm hail, torrential rain and gale force winds pounding the car!  Meanwhile the Sun was out shining just to our west, I am assuming we got caught in a rain foot/microburst due to this!

As we continued further north (I think the road took us NE which took us out of the hail core), things began to improve and eventually the rain and hail stopped (quite abruptly) it was quite eerie actually – although there was some drizzle.  The main updraft you could see was to the SW…we spotted one possible funnel, but I would be quite hesitant to call it one (it didn’t last very long and became very “scuddy” after).  And would you believe…still not one CG!!!  The storm had appeared a little smaller at this stage…the road curved back underneath the anvil and hail began to fall!  There was a fair bit of hail actually…the hail was falling in front of the storm, this was mostly 2cm stones.  You could see the tyre marks in the hail on the road – this was just from hail falling in front of the storm! 

Many people had pulled over again – there was no rain at all, JUST hail (and I thought it humorous that people had their wipers on for hail and no rain, although I think I did too but it was the fact that I forgot to turn them off after :)  I wanted to find a lookout or something and see whether the storm had any decent structure…opposite to a service station I sighted a road, “Johanna Rd” – well, given Joey’s real name was Johanna I thought what the heck, so we took the road and it took us back SW.  I was hoping for a clearing, but it actually was a shortcut from the north to take you back towards Jimboomba and into the car centre.  Just as we were coming into the town there were “white explosions” on the ground.  “Oh f…!!!  That’s massive hail!!!”  I said…they weren’t massive…but golf ball size easy!  The weren’t many of them though, it was hit and miss (i.e. there was a golf ball stone falling around us every second or two), but they were breaking into 2-3cm pieces when they hit the road!  I quickly tried to do a U-turn thinking of taking shelter at the service station about 2km away.  Joey fumbled to get the video camera back on…and then the stones were hitting some of the parked cars setting off car alarms!!!!!!  We got one stone on the windscreen which looked about 3.5-4cm, it gave me a fright and I thought it was going to smash it as it made an absolute tremendous noise!!!  But it didn’t fortunately.  I literally redlined the car in the lower three gears to get out of there and back to the service station ASAP! 

We were about 500m in front of the hail, so we parked underneath and I jumped out with the video camera.  I had a few strange looks (as the hail was falling in front of the storm so no one really knew what was coming)…30 seconds later they soon found out as the service station tin roof began to get pummeled with hailstones.  I was disappointed that the largest they were getting were only 3cm though, after seeing such big ones just barely 2km away!  I guess large hail is very isolated in a storm normally so just 2km makes a difference.  And given that we got hail there and Dale (who also lives in Jimboomba, only got drizzle) shows how localized the events can be!  (Jimboomba is only all of 5-6km wide/long if that <if you include the outer areas>).

We waited it out at the service station and it went to the north…reported the hail and also talked to MB to get an idea on the further development to the S and SW.  We decided to head south to a little lookout I knew near the Christian Outreach Centre just north of Beaudesert as the original supercell had weakened…although there was a lot of stratocumulus at this stage and it was difficult to see it.  We were under a SE’ly after the storm so I assume the SE’lies were bringing in the stratocu.  As we departed once again I expressed my amazement in not even seeing one CG from the storm!!!  Golf ball hail but no CGs…go figure.

At the lookout we saw that there was hail in the flooded gutters beside the road…most of the stones were only a centimeter, but a couple were around 1.5-2cm (not bad given the storm had gone over there about 30-40minutes ago…we were actually sitting in the car for 10 minutes and hadn’t actually looked around us for hailstones in the gutter yet until Joey pointed them out as she hopped out). 

There were a couple of cells to our WSW, and then some ‘muck’ to our south.  Originally I had promised Joey “At least one CG” – wanting to keep that promise we decided to head back to Beaudesert, shoot westwards towards Boonah and then north towards Ipswich (there is no road that goes NW across the Flinders Ranges which is annoying – well there is one, but I’ve never been on it before, I should try it one time but I would have imagined it to be quite windy and possibly unsealed).  We got a few flashes of lightning (first lightning!!!) of the day on Boonah-Beaudesert Rd, and then we saw some very nice CC lightning bolts heading north (they were spreading through the cloud, although not crawlers).  We also saw one CG…well, I saw one CG, Joey still hadn’t seen her CG! :(  Just north of Amberley on the Cunningham Hwy we got caught in some torrential rain…visibility was quite bad but still could do 60-70km/h (more so because we were following other cars in front and could see where they were going).  Just as we got north of the storm there was a blinding flash behind us…a few seconds later a loud bang!!!  The second CG, although none of us actually saw the bolt.  The storms that had originally developed were weakening though and the lightning overall was infrequent.  I decided to drop Joey home and then head back home myself.  What a chase to start the 2002-2003 season though!!!  It was very exciting, although I was hoping for some good structure (which didn’t really happen).  But who can complain when you get basically everything else!!!  I checked the car for dents a little closer…there’s some nice ones on the bonnet and a few on the roof, otherwise it faired well (I was wondering how a new and potentially softer car would handle hail).  There’s a fairly prominent dent on the right hand side of the bonnet though…but oh well, when I bought a new car in March I decided to not let it effect my chasing habits otherwise there would be no point in buying a car for that purpose (i.e. chasing).  It’s “broken in” now so the next lot of hail won’t be so bad!