Ranges Storms - Pulse Severe

January 30, 2000

I had been keeping my eye on Sunday the 30th of January for a few days, noticing that a surface trough just west of SE QLD and an upper level trough could possibly make things interesting.  Unfortunately, on Saturday due to hardware failure, I was unable to make a final opinion on the situation!  Fortunately, I was able to repair the problem late on Sunday morning thanks to a computer store actually being open!

The sky had appeared somewhat "junky" most of the morning, with a lot of large Cu and weak congestus about.  A fairly strong looking cell caught my eye out in Moreton Bay, but this did not do much and soon weakened.  It was now midday, and the day was progressively looking more promising, with patches of castellatus also throwing some promise.  Large congestus showers were both visible on radar and visually.  By 2pm, it was too much for me - I decided to go down to the park and get a better view of things.  While driving to the park, I decided I'd be better off going to the Sunnybank Shopping Plaza car park as I'd be able to see if there was anything worth chasing near the Beaudesert area (50km south of Brisbane - situated just north of the foothills of the border ranges).  I noticed several lines of congestus, with some promising congestus to my SSW.  I also noticed some development to my west, which eventually formed a small anvil.

It was now 2:30pm, and it wasn't looking too promising for Brisbane!  I decided that if I was to get any storms at all today, I'd have to travel out west along the Warrego Highway, or take the Mt. Lindsey Highway to Beaudesert.  I phoned Andrew McDonald, who confirmed my suspicions -quite a good scattering of showers/cells near the border ranges.  It was this point I decided that I would want to avoid the border ranges, and head west for sunnier skies with some weaker congestus progressively getting stronger, and the one small Cb.  The reason I decided on this was because it appeared as if it was going to get very cluttered aroundthe ranges, with many convective cells fighting for the same 'food' - even if a nice cell did form, photo opportunities would have been few and far between given the amount of low level cloud and congestus around.

I took Kessels Rd onto the Ipswich Motorway which eventually became the Warrego Highway - I had a good view of two cells that were starting to do quite nicely to my west.  The original cell I saw appeared stronger, and larger - but I wasn't sure if it was because I was getting closer to it!  But the anvil started to take on a more defined shape to it, rather than a diffuse glaciated appearance.  The other cell to my WNW looked like it was continuing to pulse, with a weak anvil but strong updrafts temporarily making the anvil look quite nice.  This cell was quite photogenic, but there wasn't much of an opportunity to stop and take photos!  Static on radio by now was starting to get noticeably more frequent, with only a couple of seconds maximum between discharges.  One cell near Beaudesert caught my eye - it appeared to possibly be a severe hailstorm from my view of it, but it only showed a large degree of strength for about fifteen minutes.

I continued west, this cell that I originally saw from Sunnybank was still strengthening (but slowly!)  Soon it was quite well organised, with a well defined RFB.  A small rain foot that would soon become a semi-permanent feature of this storm was also present.  I was near Plainland, and decided to continue west along the Warrego.  While getting back onto the Warrego I noticed a nice lowering under the RFB, I sped off towards this and watched it continually grow.  It soon became a prominent lowered base, quite nice!  The storm was still evolving, I noticed the outflow region was beginning to become more structured - and the lowering took on a nice round shape...  I took the Gatton Bypass (bad mistake!), much of the road was now covered with trees!  The lowering had grabbed my attention, it was looking rather suspicious!  Just when I was about to get my video camera out and attempt filming through the trees, what should happen?  I got stuck behind a police car!!!  I decided it would not be a very intelligent move to try and video tape while driving behind a police car, nor to overtake a police car doing 108km/h!  I was stuck...and I was stuck for a long time with the bypass not having an exits for 20km!  I was kicking myself - but there was nothing I could except enjoy the show...I noticed inflow coming in from the SE, what I would liken to a beaver tail, the entire base (not just the lowered base) had taken on a very well rounded structure.  It was rotating!!!!!  Not for long, or at least - not very strong for long.  It soon became shrouded in rain!  Soon after, I found a clear patch and I was able to quickly pull off the road and try and get some video footage, this of course did not do it justice.  I decided to continue heading west - at this stage I was getting a few spits on my windscreen.  I wanted to head north as soon as possible, but I wasn't sure if it was possible because of a limited road network.

I was now on a non-stop, one way ticket into core punching!  Another thing I would soon end up kicking myself for, I'm not keen on core punching storms that are well organised and have some fairly reasonable structure.  There was no way out of it though - I encountered some light rain at first, this wasn't too bad, but there was a lot of water on the side of the road that grabbed my attention.  I continued on and very soon came to moderate rain, but the highway was nearly covered with a 'glaze' of water!!!  The sides of the highway were completely full of water, and it was streaming out onto the highways, before I knew it - myself, and many others cars began to commence aqua-planing over areas!!!  I slowed down as quickly as I could without adding to the situation, I was soon down to 40km/h - just in time!  The rain had now become torrential, even rain-ex and the wipers on maximum couldn't help visibility!  What made it worse, was the drops were huge!  Hail was a possibility, fortunately I didn't encounter any hail.  Before I knew it, I was out of the heaviest rain (thankfully!), I saw a road that went north, I quickly took it, and very soon found debris across the road!  Some branches had fallen across the road, and water was streaming across the road at several sections.  I believe it was much higher initially, as a lot of the grass was leaning over quite significantly.  A few trees were also down, one had fallen onto the road!  Lots of leaves/twigs were strewn over the road.  One of the bridges had gone underwater, only just though!  The storms were moving slowly, so flash flooding was going to be possibly hazard to the public.  I phoned the BoM reporting the flooding and damage, but was rather dismayed to find that not even an advice warning of possible flash flooding could be expected by the slow moving thunderstorms!

There was no point in traveling further north with the cell, as there was no way I would ever be able to go around it to get in front of it, only through it!  With some useful information from both Andrew McDonald and Jane ONeill (both ASWA Victoria), I decided that I'd wait and see what the cells to my south that were coming off the border ranges would do.  Apparently, a few had 'strayed' out into more favorable chasing territory, and I was curious to see what they would do as they encountered sunny skies (the storms had passed to the north of the Warrego Highway by now), and fed on the steamy ground.  There was some fairly spectacular Cb go up just to my south, very hard updrafts!!!  I got quite excited, but they were just not moving fast enough, and could not maintain themselves properly.  The next hour or so (it was now about 5pm), was generally taken up by watching the Cb's shoot up, and then weaken before dissipating.  I was wondering if a new 'generation' of Cb's would go up - ie, normally development occurs in stages, and often quite a few Cb's will go up first before more sustaining Cb's occurred.  I was very interested to see that this is what appeared to have happened!  For about half an hour, development was going up, and then weakening out.  And then a few more sustained cells developed.  It was now near 6pm, and I was rather hungry given I had not even had lunch yet!  I had McDonald's near Gatton, and then parked myself on the road between Gatton and Laidley watching a very slow moving cell give some fairly impressive structure.  I'm not sure what people thought of me though - I pulled out the portable chair, had my SLR and video camera to my left, I had a McDonald's take-away bag on my right, while eating a cheeseburger - all beside my car with the doors open and the AM radio on loudly to hear the static.  I had one couple pull up and ask if I was OK!

After watching a glorious sunset, I decided to call it a day as the last cell appeared to begin to weaken.  Quite a nice storm chase given the relatively cool surface temperature and DP's (DP's in the high teens, temps in the high 20's).  Possibly the best two lessons from this chase was:

1)Check the map thoroughly!  Ensure that you can get off the road you're currently on if you need to.

2)I will seriously investigate getting a camera mount on my car - this way it'll be much easier to take video footage while driving - which appears to be the times when you get the best pictures!!!

Thanks very much to Andrew McDonald and Jane ONeill for their extremely helpful updates!  It was very much appreciated :-)

Pictures from this chase