Thunder
Downunder 2002
November 23, 2002 Back to Thunder Downunder 2002 Chase Reports
Day 4, Armidale-Gunnedah The morning was showing a lot of potential, CJs were developing in almost every direction except the north! We sat at the airport for the while and watched and had morning tea. We then headed down to Uralla and picked up some things for lunch and tried to find a quiet spot beside a creek to have lunch. However it had been so dry around the area that very little was running! But we did find the upper reaches of the Gwydir River and we found a very peaceful spot a few kilometers down a dirt track off the main road. We had a peaceful picnic lunch beside the river before a fairly significant increase in static on radio.
A lot of stuff had developed on the Central Tablelands (of all places!) But it was developing further north of that too. James and I decided that we would shoot south and try and meet up with the developing line.
We headed down to Tamworth and then down towards Quirindi where we went to the lookout to have a look. A massive storm was to our south, but there was also more development to our SW. We decided to take the road towards Merriwa, but in the end we headed further west of there because the massive storm to our south appeared to be weakening a little and stuff to the SW and W was looking quite promising.
After navigating through the roads we ended up west of Blackville. The best development had weakened off but didn’t do very much. Some other convection was developing to our south, we decided to sit there and wait for a bit. The stuff to our south wasn’t producing any CGs...that we could see anyway. But we were sure it had to be! There was a heap of close static on AM and most of the other storms were on the ranges further south. At last there was a CG! And another…and another…and heaps more! Eventually it was pouring out CGs along the line with a weak gustfront developing on the NW edge.
On the NE edge was a nice inflow area developing. An interesting lowering developed on the NE edge of the storm and a funnel began to descend from it slowly. Then it rapidly developed and shot down!!!
We are quite confident it touched down to a tornado, but there was a hill in our way! In video we were unsure originally, but I did a timelapse of it and you can see the entire wall cloud and probable tornado rotate!!! The area continued to develop over time, the tornado lasted around two minutes before the funnel retracted. However at least one other funnel developed after. A lovely inflow band developed along the NE and was flowing into the storm.
We wanted to get a little closer with the storm barely moving, so we headed SE to get closer. Here we watched more CGs spew out of the storm – and also saw a mesocyclone take form to our south!
On timelapse you can see the entire storm rotate, it was fantastic! Eventually we got some strong outflow, it nearly knocked over the tripod (James caught it though). We sat there for longer watching lovely CGs.
There were some beautiful rain feet flowing down the mountain and also some nice hailshafts! We wanted to get closer again, and we found a dirt road that headed SW. However the road was on a series of floodways, and one of them had just started running and was flowing a little over the road. Given there was a stationary supercell dumping rain down on the ranges, we were a little hesitant in going much beyond that point as it was the only road in and our of the valley and we didn’t want to spend the night stranded due to flooding. We headed NE to get back towards Quirindi and watched lightning to our S. Storms had developed on the strong outflow and were dumping heavy rain to our east. It looked extremely eerie though, the ground was generally flat but sloped downwards. But with dusk approaching and the torrential rain to the east from the new storms it looked like there was absolutely nothing beyond the point! Almost as if it was the end of the Earth and that we would drive off it! When we got into Quirindi we grabbed fuel (2 minutes before it closed!) and went to the lookout. We called the Victorian contingent to see where they were – they had booked accommodation in Gunnedah for us which was about an hour drive away. They ended up saying “hang on we’ll call you back” – 30 seconds later, who should come up the hill at Quirindi??? They had driven to Quirindi for the lightning. We ended up watching the lightning from the hill and then driving back to Gunnedah. We watched some video footage from the night before and then went to bed. What a great day though! Especially since the past few days while we had storms, were not the best. But to cap it off with a spectacular tornadic, stationary supercell was great! I’m amazing at how it survive in such a low shear environment. |
