Australian Severe Storms, Weather Events and Storm Chasing

[Jimmy Deguara]

David,

Regarding the Pilliga storm, I think Jeff may be right in that the sample of hail in the photos is very large and up there with the October 2004 Muswellbrook storm of 2004. Unless they have deliberately gone fossicking for the very largest stones (as perhaps only a storm chaser might do!), that is a pretty large mean hail size.

Based on the ground coverage - rather limited and there does not seem to be much hail melt in the specific hailstones mentioned, I think they have fossicked around and found whatever they could find. To me they must have been in the most severe part of the storm - not as much precipitation and giant hailstones.

I go by my estimates that the environment on this day and the hail size was more of the 8 to 9cm maximum hail size - not the near 12cm being referred to here.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Michael Bath]

A follow-up regarding this event on 29th December 2008 (page 4 of this thread)

From the BoM's Lightning Bolt newsletter:

29 December 2008: At Edgeroi, north of Narrabri on the North West Plains, a supercell thunderstorm produced giant hail. Photo evidence showed hailstones to at least 11cm in diameter, some of the largest recorded in NSW.

Edgeroi is approx 100km NE of the hail photos sourced from Kenebri (if that's where they were actually taken).

VIS satpics and radar archives on the day are poor but it looks like it was not the same cell responsible for both of the large hail reports.

[Mathew Townsend]

Dear all

Here the report from Modanville on 30th December 2008.

It was a great view up there at my dad's place and i was by myself experiening a scary moment. This large hail shaft was almost creeped towards us having my car outside (no garage!) untouched!

























Above in photos there a lightning bolt i took. This is only one daytime cg ever i took before 3pm which the earliest i had! In the backend of this cell i saw lot of lightning strikes in seperated cumulus cloud which is not part of the storm.......pretty creepy aye!? I was tackling to get a photo of that but pretty difficult.

[Tom3982s]

Amazing pictures.
Do you guys use professional equipment. My pictures usually stink!

[Mathew Townsend]

Amazing pictures.
Do you guys use professional equipment. My pictures usually stink!

I have a basic Fiji SLR digital camera with 10.1 mega-pixels. It have plenty options with shutter speed, contrast and colour format. It is very useful.