Thunder
Downunder 2002
November 22, 2002 Back to Thunder Downunder 2002 Chase Reports
I’d always wanted to visit Mt Kaputah. A friend of mine went up there once and said it looked great – and from some of the photos I had seen of it it certainly looked fantastic! It was about 40-50km out of town to the NE of Narrabri. It took about 20 minutes to get to the base and about 35-40 minutes to drive up. It was mostly dirt road so it was slow going – more so because the road was cut into a steep slope, and the road fell sharply by about 100m below, so no second chances if you went around a corner too fast and slid! It was more than worth the drive though – some fantastic lookouts on the way up, but the summit was just fantastic! It climbs up to 1511m, it’s a small walk up to the top and there you get 360 degree views!
My favourite part though was a rocky ledge near the summit, it was on the edge of a cliff and it was a great feeling standing on the edge, being on top of the world and the escarpment dropping several hundred metres below you. It was almost spiritual.
There was no one else there either, so that made it even better! We watched some Cu development bubble up and down before deciding we should eventually head back down (somewhat reluctantly given it was magnificent being there!) because it would take an hour for us to get back into Narrabri and we didn’t want storms to develop while we were stuck on top of the mountain! We headed back to Narrabri and filled up fuel, grabbed some lunch and headed just out of town to have another look at things. CJs were now developing along the Kaputah ranges and there were storms beginning to develop and anvil out to our south.
Dave and his dad needed to start heading back home, so they decided to head NE and wait for storms to develop over the Kaputah region and move off to the NE. James and I decided to head S to the other storms and also see if we could try and meet up with the other TDU goers. We ended up having chaser convergence with Clyve near Mullaley, soon after we also met up with Jane.
We headed E from Mullaley with storms to our S and W. At times they looked quite nice, especially the stuff over the Coolah Tops! But the outflow was pushing well ahead of the storms. They ended up producing some cells over the southern end of the Northern Tablelands, from Tamworth and north. Parts of Tamworth had water running across the road while parts barely 20m away were bone dry! Clyve said it well, it was as if some one had just turned the tap on at one area only. There were also some err…interesting updrafts! Interesting if you have a creative (or overactive, either one!) imagination anyway! :)
We shot NNE on the New England Hwy and stopped near Moonbi.
The outflow had produced a weak guster type region on the edge of which other storms were developing. They gave a nice rainbow and awfully cold drops! We decided to keep heading N to Armidale.
A cell had developed to the WSW of Armidale that was looking quite nice, it had some interesting lowerings underneath and a few CGs! A nice little cell had also developed to the north of Armidale and looked quite nice with the Sun shining on it. James and I headed west to get closer, but the others had driven from Melbourne and had no sleep the night before (they drove basically non-stop!) and hung back and were to look for accommodation in Armidale.
There was a nice little gustfront on the storm WSW of Armidale but it began to weaken eventually. It gave some nice rumbles of thunder though and also gave some very heavy rain over us.
When we got into Armidale the Victorian contingent tried to play a trick on us (nearly worked too!) They had taken photographs of ice cubes on the ground and had said that they had a hailstorm not so long ago. We decided to go out for dinner and went to a Chinese restaurant – great food too! Will certainly be going there again (if I can remember the name…all the Chinese restaurants in Armidale all had similar names!) |
