Deadly Downs Dust Storm
December 08, 2005 *Bordered images can be clicked on for larger photos* Interested
in purchasing prints & Enlargements? Click
here!
Stormchasing is often a risk – that’s one of the unfortunate things about it. But today was different – there comes a point where occasionally you really sit back and get a fright. We had a person killed about a kilometer away from us as a tree fell across their car from severe winds gusting to around 120-130km/h. What’s more – it was the very thing we were afraid of to as the winds whipped up dust across the road that brought visibility to around 10-15m!
The day started like any other – it looked good, but probably better further north. So from Tenterfield we drifted northwards to around Stanthorpe. Here some fairly large and early storms had already developed around Texas and were moving eastwards. We decided to watch them, and at one stage we could make out a nice guster but we decided to stay north of them as there were more storms developing to the northwest and we didn’t want to get left behind.
We headed north towards Warwick before debating what to do – the line was approaching fairly quickly and we didn’t want to get caught up crossing the Cunningham Ranges but we didn’t want to get caught heading north either. There was some lovely mammatus in the sky though which was a pretty sight!
In the end, we decided to head north and hope that we’d be able to get ahead of it. It did look likely – but over a quick evolution the storm began to intensify quickly and a bow began to develop in the squall line! Soon we could see a line of dust developing – we tried to pick up speed, but we still couldn’t outrun the approaching wall of dust! It was quite scary because it was the first time we were going in another direction from something and not been able to stay ahead of it on a straight road!
Dave kept commenting how close it was… “One kilometer away now!” “500 metres!!!”
And then it happened, right up ahead we could see stronger gusts pushing further and further ahead of the storm across the highway – that was it, we were trapped!
Within seconds the wall of dust moved over us nearly pushing us off the highway! Not only could you hear the dust hitting the car, but rocks and branches were smacking into the side! With visibility so low it was nerve-wrecking and quite worrying that we might be coming to some trees.
Thankfully – none, but when the dust did clear we saw many trees down – some of which did come across the highway, while one of the roads we passed had the unfortunate mother who was killed trying to shelter from the storm. Eventually the dust finally began to thin out – we quickly phone in a report to the Bureau before continuing on our way which was up to Toowoomba and east towards Brisbane! However the line was moving very quickly, but was backing very much to the WNW further north. So we decided to fly up the Brisbane Valley and then come out to the Sunshine Coast. We were actually able to get in front of it here (watching some very awesome CGs in the process!) However it took so long that it was now night-time and the storm was weakening. We did get some photos of a lightning-lit guster but that was it!
Still – an incredible
experience nonetheless from the “Duster Guster” as Tony coined it later!
Interested
in purchasing prints & Enlargements? Click
here!
|
