Australian Severe Storms, Weather Events and Storm Chasing

[Gambit]

I agree entirely Rodney there were some absolute crackers last night.

It did take a while to come over; the storm was looming for a good hour before it landed in Lismore. I could hear thunder just before I thought about going to bed and then thought I'll see what happens and I'm glad i did.
It hung around for about and hour? then moved off to the North.

Yesterday a bit like today was hot and very sultry, it was what felt like "Storm weather" so it was nice to get a break in the heat (and some sleep)

I managed to get a few pics, our house is surrounded by trees unfortunately.

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[David Brodrick]

Cryon, near Walgett, NSW, Dec 8 2007

Chris and I chased out of Narrabri to Cryon, between Burren Junction and Walgett.

The dominant storm put up an anvil that must have covered a big area. It was probably peaking before we got there and had lots of outflow by ~3pm when we arrived. Lot's of rain, lots of lightning, decent wind, no hail.

Highlight was that we both saw our first vortex on the ground! This thing appeared about 300m away, maybe 50m round, and was sucking up debris.. it certainly got our attention.

Dunno.. Maybe it was associated with the gust front, a "gustnado"? What do you think? There is a small lowering above the vortex, but there was no obvious funnel. The visible vortex only lasted for 30 seconds or so.

I have a really crap movie of the vortex here (7MB):
http://narrabriweather.net/tmp/cimg1543.mov

And some time-lapse footage of the storm here (2.5MB):
http://narrabriweather.net/tmp/20071208-TL.avi

Cheers,
  Dave

BTW: Jeff, I tried to get you a photo to show how wonderfully green it is, but it's a bit dark :-)

[Jimmy Deguara]

David,

Good thunderstorm over the vast Narrabri plains - looks like you had some long lived action.

Certainly that feature seems to be a gustnado along the strong outflow inflow interaction.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[David C]

December 7 Stills

As per Jimmy's post for this day earlier in the thread..

Squall line to the west:



and getting closer:







probably most interesting thing all day was the rainfall creating rapids with large standing waves in all the gullys near Menangle



Today is interesting, particularly late in the afternoon.

[Richary]

Just heard reports on the radio of 1 inch hail out west at St Clair, on the radar the big black bit looks it is heading right for Parramatta and me at Rydalmere, might have just got home and the car away in time. At the moment just very large rain drops hitting, hasn't started hailing yet.

Driving down Pennant Hills Rd it looked very black, not green though. Lots of rumbling but no lightning seen yet.

[Richary]

The storm appeared to weaken as it came over my place, mostly heavy rain with some pea size hail and few flattish ones about the size of 10 cent pieces. Looking at the radar loop the heaviest part went slightly to the north of me. Interesting was while the storm approached from the WSW, initially the rain was falling from an easterly direction despite no wind on the ground. As the main part of the storm went over the rain changed direction to come from the west. I am assuming this means fairly strong inflows higher up? Only about 5mm here, it wasn't a downpour just the rain drops were quite large ones.

From the radar loop Carlingford was probably more in the middle of the heavy stuff.

[Dave Nelson]

For Sun 9th Dec

hi gang,
              1600hrs EDT jst got hammered with hail up to 1.5 inches in Baulkhan Hills, near cnr of Windsor
 Rd and Norwest Blv.   lasted ~ 10 minutes.  much tree debris on the ground  and my toyota echo is
peppered with fine dents      ohhh well it was gonna happen some time.   

will post some pic later

Dave N

[Jeff Brislane]

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!

We just had a supercell develop and track right across Sydney from South of Penrith. I chased it from Penrith through Erskine Park and along the M4 to Blacktown where it dropped GIANT hail. I witnessed golf ball hail falling from the back of the updraft at Erskine Park and then I drove into giant hail at the Prospect Hwy. I measured a hailstone at 7.9cm! I have numerous large dents on my car now consistent with hits by at least 6cm stones but I don't think i copped a direct hit from any larger stones. While hail was falling at Erskine Park I experienced rain wrapping around the back of the storm.

Just saw the news and the footage shows evidence of sustained 8cm stones with some cars having giant holes punched through their windows!

Jeff

[Shaun Galman]

Hi guys,
Just heard the radio broadcast here also! They were saying it was bedlam out at the Blacktown Mall with parts of the roof collapsing under the weight of all the hail?

I hope someone was out there and was able to get some shots or footage with relative safety! I could imagine how the cars look as I heard the average hail size was up in the "tennis ball" range? I hope the people affected had insurance!
Cheers,
Shauno

[scottme]

Got moderate sized hail just south of Parramatta, once again from the rear updraft. Not much wind though.

Must have gotten rather interesting in Terrigal when the two storm systems collided.

[Jeff Brislane]

Here are three photos from todays supercell. The first shows hail falling at Erskine Park and the next show a broken 8cm hailstone picked up near Blacktown and the third is the three largest stones I found. My car has a lot of dents now!

Jeff.

[James]

What an amazing storm. First of all I truly hope those affected by it are ok. I drove around Dural and Cherrybrook watching as Cars with no windscreens were driven around. I thought I was about to lose mine at one point near the McDonalds however it stayed in one piece.

I spent the first 45 minutes up at Dural lookout watching a scene similar to what Ben has captured. The structure was incredible and has come across really well on video.

I will post two different videos. The first one is the structure of the Updraft time lapsed in the first part cutting to the base rotating underneath it. I can't explain how incredible it was watching this storm from such a vantage point! More video of the 6-8cm hail falling shortly.

  Sydney Storm Chasers - 09 Dec 07 Sydney Supercell Structure Video

Also a quick photo of the largest stone I could find - measured at 7.5cm around 20 minutes after falling so may have been up to 8cm when it fell.

   

[Steven]

My God those are large stones! I hope everyone is ok and not affected too much by the massive hail. The damage bill must go into the tens of millions.

[Harley Pearman]

Supercell thunderstorm - Sunday 9 December 2007

Hello

I was ready for the Sunday afternoon event and finished the day having my Council car peppered with hail dents.

At around 3 pm, I began watching a thunderstorm to the south and another cell to my north. I was thinking of going north because the northern storm cell at one stage had reasonable structure until I noted it weakening.

However, another cell to my WSW caught my attention and I kept hearing distant rolling thunder from it. Once I saw the crisp sharp anvil, I decided to stay where I was. At around 4 pm, I was rewarded with a well structured lowering on the northern side of the storm including a brief funnel (Photographed).

At this point, I could hear the sound of distant wind, rain and hail but was captivated by the wall cloud and lowering (Many photos taken).

The rain started as light drizzle being blown sideways by the gale force winds followed by larger raindrops. The hail followed. I observed allot of hail up to golf ball size (From 1 cm to 4 cm most common) and then larger 5 cm hailstones fell. The hail event lasted approximately 10 minutes. I may have witnessed 6 cm hail because I drove a short distance down the road after the storm moved on and observed stones up to 6 cm (Photographed) lying on the ground.

I bore witness to a solid barrage of hail of various sizes and the best I have seen in Sydney. Anyway, the car is now peppered with numerous hail dents especially on the boot and roof. I parked under a small leafy tree but the tree as well as numerous other trees in the same street suffered significant damage.

I photographed residents cleaning up afterwards and finally took some photos of storms to the north to conclude the day.

My decision to stay at Bella Vista paid off nicely and it is the first time, I have managed to capture a hail storm this size in Sydney in its entirety.


Harley Pearman

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

I just returned home after a long journey. I chased the Blacktown cell and almost smashed my windscreen with hail to 8cm. From Erskine Park, hailstones of up to 3cm or so and then once on the M4 motorway, I began to hear the larger thumps. Then once I got to the Wallgrove Road turn off, there was sporadic car vibrators placing new dents into the car. I think the worst hit areas are northern Blacktown where the car yards I observed have broken windcreens and I can tell some dents were quite major though isolated as one would expect.

I then tracked north east through north Parramatta and then came out onto the F3 Freeway. I got back into the flanking line or new cells near Wyong and then headed into Budgewoi area and got hail to about 5cm in diameter. No time to measure and then found myself out of the storm anyway.

What a nice supercell to break the supercell drought!

Photographs when I get a chance - I need to drink and eat!

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara