SE QLD Severe Evening Squall Line

December 9, 2002

A trough was lying through central northern NSW and central southern Queensland.  As usual this meant that we would be a generally unstable airflow, with very warm and humid N’ly winds feeding down from the Coral.  There was a cooling in the mid levels as a strong upper trough was pushing in from the west in Victoria.  However our cooling was only slight, but still enabled for some nice storms to develop.

I had to work in the afternoon, but once I finished my duties I headed out.  Storms were developing on the Cunningham Ranges and south of Beaudesert.  One of the storms moved off the Cunningham and was heading towards Beaudesert – it had areas of pink and red reflectivities. 

I couldn’t see very much driving down as it was very hazy, however I was able to get glimpses of a very solid anvil on the M4 heading SW.  I went down the Mt Lindsay Hwy and stopped at the COC Lookout.  I was talking to Dale and Jason on the way, both of them were also heading towards the Beaudesert area.  The storm to my WSW was showing some interesting characteristics – for a while it hinted at some supercellular characteristics but either it suddenly weakened or they were just good at imitating!  I have a feeling it was the former though – the storm was strong before, and developed a little inflow band that almost seemed to start wrapping into the updraft region.  But this soon weakened and the storm collapsed into a few weaker cells. 

At about this time Jason (from the Gold Coast) and Dale (from Jimboomba) arrived.  A farmer was irrigating their crops beside the road and their sprinkler was washing well across their fence and onto the shoulders of the road and on the road itself.  It ended up giving the cars a bit of a washing!  Although we moved the cars after a while as we figured it was probably bore water and we didn’t want to get bore water on the cars (contains some salts).

Another line of storms had developed to our west – it ended up becoming a severe squall line and did some damage around the Grandchester-Laidley area.  Several trees were taken down and quite a few sheds were destroyed!  In fact one road between Grandchester and Hiddenvale was closed for about 12 hours because it was covered in trees and had to be cleared!  We saw it from a distance though, with a nice gustfront and some powerful CGs striking through the guster – it was quite nice! 

As it was approaching it appeared that it would go just north of us, so we decided to shoot north up to the fruitbarn lookout to watch it come across.  Dale led the way…and well, I don’t think I’d done the Mt Lindsay Hwy so quickly before!  Soon we were watching lightning to our W and SW.  The feature though was a beautiful CG that struck about a kilometre away in front of us – full of branches!  It left an imprint in our eyes for several minutes later!  The storm moved on top of us and we got some nice winds and very heavy rain. 

Another line of storms was developing to our west so Jason and I decided to head out towards Ipswich to see if it was going to do anything.  Unfortunately it didn’t do too much, although we did see some nice backend lightning to our east.  We ended up getting a late, nutritional dinner of McDonalds and then we both headed home.  But certainly was quite an enjoyable evening!