Redcliffe Golfball Hail Supercell

October 26, 2003

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It was prepping up to be a big day a few days out with a strong upper trough pushing into NSW quite rapidly.  That was sending shear off the scale through SE QLD on Sunday the 26th of October!  25-30 knots at 850 from the NW, 40 knots at 700 from the west and 50-60 knots at 500mb from the west!  Upper temps were around -14C with temps pushing into the high 20s and low 30s and surface DPs in the low 20s!  LIs were dropping down to -7/-8 across the region.  A dryline was pushing close to the coast and the strong 850 winds were bringing warm air at 850 to help suppress convection into later in the afternoon.  A southerly change was moving up the coast and it was tempting to play the triple point but I thought it may have been too risky with the dryline so close and the chance of it drying out.  The trough was going to move rapidly, storms were going to be needing speeding fines…so no room for mistakes!!!

That morning was cloudy but very humid, it was overcast with low level cloud until after 9am but it was flying in from the north!  Testimony to the low level shear and deep moist layer ahead of the dryline.  One of my best friends is also a stormchaser, and I arranged to meet up with Jason to chase on this day.  We’d been eying it off for a while – it was the *only* day that I could possibly chase over the past 10 or so days and I’d been frustrated working all the time when there were storms, only to get the last hour or two of action before it collapsed after sunset!  Needless to say, it was made up for on this day!!!

Jason suggested that he could meet me at my place (1.5hr drive, he lives on the Gold Coast and I live west of Brisbane), but I suggested that due to the speed of things moving, we probably couldn’t really stay ahead of them.  All we could do is stick to the coast and keep trying to go north to get ahead of more storms (Bruce Mwy goes north and the speed limit is 110 so you can go faster!)  We arranged to meet at Garden City and then decide from there.  The low level cloud finally cleared where we were and it revealed a tremendously unstable sky! 

From 11am, I could see storms developing to the far southwest over the ranges with some nice updrafts!

I met up with Jason at Garden City and then we decided to go to the Sunnybank rooftop carpark to watch.  There wasn’t really anything else to do but watch, and Sunnybank had quick access to the Gateway Mwy to shoot north or south if required, so we sat there for around two hours and watched.  We saw an explosive cell develop to our south, but it wasn’t any point in following that as it was going SE too quickly, but we were quickly getting interested in a cell to our west which although we couldn’t see many features looked quite nice and dark with some distant CGs popping out of it and HEAPS of mammatus streaming overhead!  It looked to be going ENE though, and that meant it’d go north of us, so we shot northwards on the Gateway, getting frustrated with drivers who weren’t obeying the “keep left unless overtaking” rule!  Just south of Redcliffe we could see the edge of the storm coming across.  Due to the haze it was difficult to make out, but all we could tell was that it was nasty!

We crossed “The Bridge” into Redcliffe and stopped at one of the points overlooking the water.  The eastern part of the storm had inflow cloud wrapping into the meso, with a lowered region (possible wall cloud, but difficult to tell from our position) underneath. 

The storm was possibly becoming more outflow dominated though as it approached.  I wanted to be back on the southern side of the bridge, but it was too dangerous – any tornado that developed would have gone over that region and there was nowhere to go! 

We were getting a spectacular view of the gustfront though, with vivid greenage and insane pulsing CGs ahead of the storm!  It was absolutely amazing watching it advance across!!!  The northerlies were strengthening ahead of it, reaching 25-30 knots at times!

The only problem with the coast is that there’s no where else to go once you hit the coastal regions, the storm was originally looking to go just south of us from our position before but we were well and truly going to cop the northern part of the storm wrapping around! 

We were about 100m from our car at this stage, and as the gustfront moved over it gave a brief period of 15-20 knot warm, westerly winds before being blasted by icy cold outflow winds (temperature dropped from around 26-27C to about 18C in a matter of seconds!) 

It was quite funny, in that we were so mesmerised by the storm we had forgotten the car was still down the road a bit…at this stage we were both walking backwards and taking photos/video, before the main outflow hit with small hail!  We sprinted back to the car, but at this stage winds were around 80-90km/h, we both nearly got pushed over by the winds (it was like running down hill and you couldn’t stop almost!)  There was branches and dust flying through the air, before finally jumping into the car!

It was only small hail at first with lots of rain and strong winds (up to 90-100km/h at times).  The hail gradually got larger to 2-3cm, and then a few minutes later we were getting stones up to golfball size!!!  We didn’t have shelter, but there was a park shelter a few hundred metres away.  We drove up onto the footpath and tried to park near the shelter, at this stage some of the stones on video well and truly look around 5cm with some TREMENDOUS clunks on the roof (and the associated profanities!)  Wind the wind blowing, sitting on the eastern side of the BBQ shelter gave us some protection from the hail which was good, although the largest stuff didn’t last for too long which was quite thankful as I got quite a few big dents on my car from that burst alone!!!

After that line went through, we shot northwards along the Bruce…there was heaps of hail (lots of golfball stones) lying on the side of the highway with very thick hailfog!!!  We were desperately trying to get in front of another storm before it moved over the highway, the entire thing was just white and it was later again in the afternoon and the threat of even larger hail was quite a high one!!!  I could see the hailshafts in my rear vision mirror, and cars going southbound slamming on their breaks and disappearing into the zero visibility.  The shafts were also coming in from the left of out position…Jason was there saying “We need to go faster Anthony!!!” And I’m looking down at my speedo thinking “I’m going to lose my licence if I go much faster!!!”  We got some 2cm hail and gusty winds just on the edge, before *just* pulling away – felt a bit like Independence Day where the plane only just escapes the fireball!  Needless to say there suddenly wasn’t any traffic behind us for a while so I’m glad we got out of it although from some reports I’ve heard it was mostly just lots and lots of hail as opposed to really really big stones!

The gustfront wasn’t overly impressive unfortunately on that cell, only got some video before heading further north up towards Gympie and Tin Can Bay where we were treated to some spectacular updrafts and mammatus just before sunset!!!

We went to the servo to borrow their microwave and heat up some pies for dinner, but while eating them we had another couple of cells develop right on top of us and give some nice lightning, although when we got the cameras out the CGs stopped instantly!  Driving back home we stopped periodically to watch some of the AWESOME structure to our north being lit up by frequent lightning!  What an awesome end to the day!!!