Southeast QLD Bombs!

October 24, 2005

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IDays like today are always difficult to pick…extreme instability along the coast, and substantial instability inland only with much better shear inland than the coast.  With Lis of –8 to –10, it was hard to drag ourselves to the –4 to –6 area, but shear was better and we thought we’d gamble it!

It was a long wait, stuff bubbled up and down but it didn’t really want to take off until finally a cell to our west began to do something.  In the meantime, thunderstorms were bubbling away in our home region and producing some very nice updrafts!

Macca and I started at Dalby and waited and waited with some nice updrafts near us going up and town.  Eventually when a cell developed to our west and began to look a little stronger than the surrounding cells we headed out of town by about 30km or so to view it better.  

Annoyingly the storm was going towards the SE – and even more annoying were the spectacular mass of updrafts to our east which we later found to be a stationary supercell that produced cricketball hail within kilometres of my house!  One farmer recorded 200mm from the storm, while cars were apparently washed away in the valley to our west.

We decided to head eastwards back to Dalby, and take a southward road towards Cecil Plains – our storm still wasn’t really doing much, and it looked a bit featureless (very annoying, given all other storms in the line did something).  But that was soon to change by a spectacular barrage of CGs!!!  We were sitting south of Cecil Plains and the CG bursts became just scary!  Up to seven a second, right along the line, averaging 1-2 a second overall!!!  Was just amazing, we flew eastwards with the original cell weakening – but the northern edge really intensified (and produced golfball hail near Dalby apparently!)  

We were in very strong outflow…solid 70-80km/h with light rain (it REALLY hurt hitting you!!!)  But I braved the weather and were able to get a few daytime/dusk shots of CGs – which wasn’t too hard given the frequency of them but still only managed a couple of good ones as I couldn’t face the camera in the wind or I’d get water over the lens from the rain, so had to go for a side which wasn’t as frequent!

Soon enough though, the line overtook us and it was moving too quickly for us to get out of it, and after driving through torrential rain and gales for half an hour and checking radar out, we decided that we probably weren’t going to get ahead of it, so just had to stay put in Toowoomba and get some dinner and watch the lightning approach Brisbane.  

Getting home though got a little interesting – a foot of water was flowing across the road to my place!  Fortunately it was really only moving slowly…still, my car wouldn’t have been happy if it was much deeper!!  And then we got home to see the power was out…effectively Macca was stuck at my place, his car was in the house yard which had an electric gate and I didn’t know where the key was in the dark to unlock it from the electric hinges…and even if I found it, Macca only had a Pulsar and I had a Forester and if my car only just made it through the floodway, there was no way his would have!  So we had to sit in the dark (candle-lit dark), and just discuss the day’s events, future and past chases before eventually falling asleep.  Though Macca was unsatisfied with a spider near his bed so had to dismantle it first so he could sleep on the floor!  Lol  Was a good day overall, just frustrating that an awesome cell developed so close to home, but oh well!