Moree-Glen Innes Multicell

October 13, 2002

Sunday was looking like being a major outbreak across much of NSW and southern Queensland!  Moisture had been pumping into the region for a few days and a weak trough was producing some nice storm activity over the past couple of days.  A stronger trough and upper trough was going to move into the region with some nice shear.  LIs were forecast for -4 to -6 across much of the region with two reasonable areas of -6 to -8 in southern Queensland and the Hunter valley.  Furthermore, as the front and trough progressed through Melbourne it produced severe hail, damaging winds and haildrifts too!  So it was looking promising…however NSW got most of the action, Queensland eventually got action too but by then I had given up and headed south (doh!)  But I got a nice consolation prize at least.

I left my house just before 9am, I wanted to set out to Goondiwindi (about 4 hours away).  I thought the cap wouldn’t be that strong, so things would take off by the early afternoon.  One of the things I was actually concerned about was cloud.  But once I got past Toowoomba the skies were quite clear which was encouraging!  At Goondiwindi it didn’t look too bad with lots of moderate Cu…I refuelled and then sat about 20km south of Gundy and sat underneath a tree and read a book.  Some development began to my SW but that soon collapsed and very soon everything began to collapse!  Things really started to look horrible and they appeared to be heavily capped and drying out.  Some better convection was developing to my south, but I was hesitant to move because I knew that if anything did develop in my region (or north) it would explode.  But as 2pm…3pm…4pm passed I began to lose hope.  The sky had become almost clear-weather and looked very dry and winds were beginning to tend NW’ly. 

I could see the trough to my west with clear air behind it.  Just after 4pm I decided to head south and give up on southern Queensland.  I headed down to Moree to some small convection there. 

A little tower developed to the SE and actually did quite well to develop into a small storm!  I decided to head east towards Warialga to see what I could get out of it.

The storm gradually intensified and became quite nice – especially lit up by the setting sun! 

However nightfall fell and there wasn’t much lightning from the storm, this was a real shame as the storm had some great structure with a terrific backshear!  However that was it, I headed further east to Inverall and then SSE to Tingha and then SE to Guyra intercepting the storm with some brief heavy rain. 

Heading back north on the New England Hwy at around Ben Lemond I got some small hail but this was probably to do with the fact that I had climbed to about 1300m on the ranges. 

I also got a glimpse of the storms that finally decided to develop in southern Queensland!  One storm was quite nice and moved near Warwick, but I was a good couple of hours south of it.  Even when I headed to Tenterfield it wasn’t really worth going after it.  Instead I booked in at Tenterfield (after doing around 1000km) and decided to sit just outside of the town and watching some lightning from a few other cells that developed in southern Queensland.

The following morning I couldn’t resist taking some footage of a sign I see all the time going along the New England Hwy…only in Queensland!!!