Awesome
Squall Line Smashes SE QLD!
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It was an unusual situation with a very strong front moving through, accompanied by a strong cold pool over NSW. The setup was going to produce an east coast low - but ahead of that the winds were extremely strong! 850 was NW @ 50kts, backing to 90kts @ 500mb!!! Gusty 20-30 knot (reaching 40 knots at times), N/NW winds were converging with an approaching 40-50 knot SW change which produced very strong winds for the next 24 hours, bringing some damage, and combining with the squall line to black out over 100,000 homes across SE QLD! It was an unusual feel to the day - warm and dry, but not overly dry - and DPs actually rose a little during the day which was good, before stablising in the low double figures towards the afternoon in the western districts, and high single figures in the Downs. A line of weak showers developed north of Goondiwindi during the afternoon before the Moree radar went out for a short period...it came back, showing a weak line of showers near Texas to Inglewood. They eventually came onto Brisbane radar and began to intensify - one cell explosively developed near Warwick and soon became embedded in a line, while the line backed northwest towards Oakey and Toowoomba with some stronger areas. I left home and shot eastwards towards Rosewood - it was odd, it was windy and I got some brief bursts very very heavy rain (like 1-3 seconds of sky-falling down on me type rain then nothing!) I checked the radar at Rosewood and saw that the line had intensified rapidly...of which it was virtually on top of me! It then clicked that I was probably sitting underneath the RFB of the region and was just riding ahead of it - with that I shot out of there like a bullet and headed to Amberley! Just as I began to leave, the first ~70km/h gusts arrived with some heavy rain - I just got out in time, but within seconds of slowing down at Amberley the line overtook me! I just got into the servo to get some awesome footage of the line with cyclonic type conditions and video!!! Click here to download the video footage (5.7mb) - was like being in a tropical cyclone!!! The initial tings are small branches hitting the servo roof. The following day a shed was demolished within 500m of the servo, but the other interesting thing was the persistent strong winds of 40-50 knots that followed that night!!! Was incredible - kept being woken up by the winds buffeting the house - and it was great to see the electornic signs on the freeway being put to good use with the warnings placed on them! :)
Nice little start to the new chase season! Interested
in purchasing prints & Enlargements? Click
here!
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