SE
QLD Fun Chase
The NE NSW and SE QLD region was looking at another day of storms. However there was a SE change moving up the coast this day ahead of warm, moist northerly winds. An upper trough was also pushing in from the west. I had to work from 2:30pm onwards, and I originally wanted stuff to develop late. However with a weak cap and a SE change moving up the coast, I didn’t think this was likely. In the end I actually was able to get a chase in before work!
Storms began developing on the ranges early, by just after 10am the first few cells were popping up on the ranges. I had put my car in for a service in the morning, and was using a loan car (Subaru Outback) for chasing purposes around the suburbs until I got my car back. I also had some running around to do (for the ASWA meeting the next day, and picking up a few odds and ends).
But by midday I was able to sit down the road at the park and watch some of the storms to the south. I headed down towards Mt Gravatt as I had to go to Photo Continetal, there I saw some absolutely fantastic updrafts from a line of storms off the south!
The line was originally moving northwards, but with the strong development on the western edge of the line, it began to move more towards the NNW.
I shot down to Springwood as I had a call that my car was ready – I picked it up and then went down to Kingston to the Jehova Witness lookout. It looked a little green to the SW, other then that there wasn’t a huge amount of features.
I was really hoping for a gustfront, so was a little disappointed initially, but there were quite a few nice CGs! I ended up heading WNW on the M6 and then got onto the M4, the storm began to look severe at this stage with an ill-defined, but mean looking gustfront region developing on the northern edge.
I ended up intercepting the line near Wacol, I got strong gusty winds (70-75km/h) with torrential rain! Many people ended up pulling off the road.
I took the Wacol exit off the M4 and drove around for a bit – I got around 7-8 flangs, it was great fun! However I had to start work quite soon so I ended up heading back for work on the M4. Once again I got into extremely heavy rain – most of the cars had pulled off on the side of the road due to the heavy rain from before!
I got to work just in time – not the biggest/best chase, but still a little bit of fun! |
