Thunder
Downunder 2002
November 29, 2002 Back to Thunder Downunder 2002 Chase Reports
Day 10, Glen-Innes – Tenterfield (via Inverall, Guyra, Stanthorpe, Pikedale and Emmaville) We awoke to mostly sunny skies, just a few traces of ACCAS which was a good sign! We loaded up the satpic in the morning, but we were dismayed to see that a concern we had, had eventuated. The fast jet had brought a pile of tropical moisture through the upper levels and there was large cloud band stretching through central NSW. James and I discussed the situation, we decided we would try and stay in northern NSW (even though the shear and instability was better south). The main reason being that we wanted to try and stay in clear air for as long as possible and also it meant there was less to drive the following day. We ended up gathering at the Celtic Lookout once again and watching. There was some moderate Cu, but nothing overly exciting. However we got a bit of a shock when we turned the AM radio on! A pile of static – a quick call to MB showed that a large line of storms had developed through the NW Slopes and Plains already! James and I decided we’d head west to Inverell to see what it looked like (could only just start to see the tops of the storms from our position).
However the line looked very weak when we got closer to it, somewhat unorganized and almost imbedded. For that we decided to head back towards Glen Innes. Some newer storms were developing to our south which was encouraging. From Glen Innes we headed south towards Guyra.
The storms were now to our SSW from this position – one of them was getting organised nicely! The Victorian chasers suggested it may have been a supercell as they were on the other side of this and saw rotation under the main base – but it was quite short lived. From our angle it produced a nice little guster region which looked quite cool with the ‘tail’ of the guster continually developing on the edge of the outflow. We got some torrential rain from the storm in Guyra! We headed E on the road to Ebor to keep up with it, but for a large part it was slow going. The road kept passing the storm’s path and we kept getting caught in heavy rain! Worst of all, eventually the road was closed (they were upgrading it), we tried to see if it was possible to still go through it but it was closed at one small point (trees physically over the road, not just a sign you could drive around).
We headed back towards Guyra to see what else might develop – it would have been good to have ducked into the Northern Rivers, as the area looked good for later that day, but it wasn’t to be! Just outside of Guyra we stopped to see some low cu over the ranges from the cool moist air – quite cool! But when I got out of the car I heard a faint hissing noise coming from one of the tyres – the tyre looked OK for the moment, so I decided to keep driving and see how it went. I checked it at Guyra, the hissing was gone but I thought it’d be a good idea to keep an eye on it. It was going to be too cold at Guyra for any other storms so we headed north. We ended up targeting the Downs, but storms had developed and collapsed by the time we got there (doh!) It was annoying…Northern Rivers would have set us up nicely (dam those NSW roads!!!)
We did get some nice scenery shots of a pretty creek though – but after that we noticed the front left tyre had gone down a bit. We changed the tyre over with the spare, and headed back to Stanthorpe. There was a heap of static on radio! We got an update from some one to find out where it was all coming from – another line of storms had developed in the NW Slopes and Plains and was going to move across the Northern Tablelands. We shot south down towards Emmaville. The lightning was amazing!!! Nearly constant at times, just flickering away! We found an advantage point and waited. A MASSIVE gustfront had developed from the storm – it eventually moved over us and gave strong outflow winds (well into gale force). The winds were so strong we were standing on a dirt road and it hurt because the wind was picking up dirt and blowing it along the ground and it stung on your legs!!
Eventually down came the rain – it was quite heavy, we even had some small hail which was good fun! Didn’t last very long though. We got out of squall line and moved NE, some more storms had developed to our NW and were giving off some nice lightning. But before we got out of that we had an extremely close CG strike virtually beside the car! Certainly within 50m, one of the closer ones I’ve ever experienced! I remember feeling the car rock slightly from the strike! We ended up arriving in Tenterfield and found some grumpy motel owners (who were annoyed that we should want accommodation at midnight…) but they had one room left so we took it. In Tenterfield we had a nice storm go over with some nice loud booms of thunder and some heavy rain, just generally fun! Had some fun playing in the puddles too – hey, even adults enjoy the simple kid-like pleasures at times! We then went to bed for tomorrow. It was a great squall line – just frustrating otherwise. Had we gone any further south though we would have been out of position for the following day, and cloudy storm days are always annoying because it’s difficult to see where the development really is. |
