Thunder Downunder - Storm Chasing - Mt Perry Monster Storms!

Mt Perry Monster Storms!

October 27, 2002

Click here for part one of this report!
Click here for radar!
There were some nice updrafts to our west, we were contemplating heading back to Gin Gin and then WSW towards Mt Perry but were unsure. But after a call from a friend talking about some stuff developing off the NW we decided to head towards Mt Perry, although not too sure if we wanted to go all the way. In the end we ended up getting all the way to Mt Perry.

We headed towards the lookout and got to the top – an absolutely awesome view!!! There was a storm to our south that looked quite nice, while a weaker more disorganised storm was to our north with its anvil over us. We had quite a few anvil crawlers go overhead, it was a little disconcerting because they were so bright that it lit up the entire area!

That and we were on a hill and I was concerned of the lightning risk. As the storm passed just to our east, the sun came out behind us and it made for a nice rainbow to our east. We even witnessed a CG striking through the rainbow! But unfortunately not on video or film :(

The rainbow itself was quite photogenic and nice to watch, after that one of the storms to our south decided to put out some nice mammatus with an impressive back-end of the cell. It was slowly gliding to our east.

Some Cu was developing to our west and made for some nice crepuscular rays from the CJs.

Another storm was beginning to develop to our north, it quickly produced a small but nice gustfront and was putting out lots of CGs! However this coincided with some more nice mammatus off to the south, and the rapidly developing CJs to the west into a line of storms that was rapidly beginning to develop a nice gustfront also!

Needless to say, it was difficult trying to juggle videoing and photographing three storms all at once!!! The gustfront to the west was rapidly grabbing our attention, it was developing very quickly and becoming quite large! It was possibly to do with the fact that there were constant 25-30 knot N’lies where we were, it was cool (temperature around 23-24C as we had had several storms go over the area, and humidity was close to 100%).

Eventually the mammatus and the CGs to the north were forgotten as the gustfront was becoming a monster to our west! There wasn’t a large amount of lightning associated with it, but it certainly looked impressive! Only problem was it was getting late (on dusk), so the video doesn’t show it as well as it really was.

We had some heavy rain come over us – of course, I had the tripod setup so I could take photos in the dark of the gustfront as it was too dark to take hand held photos. We both got saturated (so did the car, as all the doors were open!) Not to worry of course – all part of the fun!

The gustfront also came over, but it was definitely a case of its bark being much worse than its bite. Only some gusty W’ly winds (25-30 knots) and brief heavy rain. It was now 6:20pm, we thought we’d head back to Gin Gin as it was a minimum 5hrs drive back to my place. We were discussing how much we would have liked a lightning show…well, Wide Bay provided that too! I thought I saw some flashes to the south as we were driving back to Gin Gin, but the road is quite treed in so it was difficult to keep an eye on it. After heading into clear air at Gin Gin lighting was certainly very visible to the south! We headed towards Childers and stopped there and watched to our west. The entire sky was lit up by lightning of several flashes a second – not dull lightning either, very bright! Normally I have to get the torch out to attach my camera to the tripod, but I didn’t have to do that as I was able to just use the light from the lightning. There was a lot of precipitation around the storms, so the only CGs that were visible were ones very close unfortunately. The camera was pointed at a few of them, but they were too bright and there was too much of a reflection on the rain so on video all it did was make the screen go white. We had some strong winds and very heavy rain at Childers…gusts at Childers would have been getting up to 80km/h or so quite easily! As we were driving through Childers a CG struck part of the town, it blew up a power transformer with a large glow lasting for several seconds and part of the town losing power. There was some very heavy rain from the storms still, quite a few people were driving with their hazard lights on. Just south of Childers within a couple of kilometres of each other there were two trees across the Bruce Hwy, one of them had only just been recently cleared, but there was a lot of debris on the road still. Some of the bolts of lightning became more visible after the storm as there was less rain around them, but it was around 9pm and it was a good 3hrs or so back to my place still, and on not much sleep I didn’t want to push it too much. So we decided to head back south, watching lighting from some storms over the Sunshine Coast.

There was lightning visible all the way back home, although the last two hours was more infrequent and was just the occasional flash. The road conditions were quite bad, so I kept about 20km/h under what I normally do on the Bruce Mwy between the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane…even then most people were doing much less again. The winds were very strong from the SE…they were almost severe I thought! 80-90km/h…there was actually damage reported from the strong SE’lies around the Bruce Mwy and just E of there the following day too. But it kept pushing the car around, Jason asked me if I was tired because I kept ‘drifting’ a bit, I said that I was but it wasn’t really the reason I was drifting, more so the wind!

We arrived at my place just after midnight, and after doing 1025km. It was certainly worth it though, I was simply just an awesome day!!! So much to see and enjoy, and visiting new places too – I love chasing!!!

Click here for part one of this report!