Australian Severe Storms, Weather Events and Storm Chasing

[Dave Nelson]

Hi gang

   A suprise for sunday afternoon as a number of pulse storms fired up over the Katoomba and Lithgow areas
along a trough line.   Cindy and I travelled to the Northern Rd, S of Penrith where we had a clear view of several
cells. We spent ~ an hour watching and photographing them till they finally died out. for a while one of them
had a good looking base on it.

  cheers
Dave N

[Jimmy Deguara]

Report thunderstorms January 4 2009

The family Imelda, Kimberly and I went out for a relatively local chase out to the Central Tablelands. And boy did the moisture play tricks!

Heading out to Lithgow, I saw storm activity in the Wollemi and also out near Bathurst. I tentatively headed out nearer Bathurst and then realised the storm was getting undercut by drier air and the storm weakened. Moisture remained nearer Lithgow so we headed back and basically caught the heavy rain and a few pea sized hailstones near Bell. The cell seemed to go through a split with inflow structure observed as well. Never really got the best opportunity of good shots of the structure given the storm entered the Wollemi National Park.

Here are a few images:
















All photos for 4 January 2009

[Ben]

Nice shots there Jimmy!! I was up there as well with Phil.
Hailshaft
   
Can see a bit of an inflow band on these other two cells.
   
       
  What is a victorian storm doing in the NSW stormlands? It was actually returning echos on radar... 
And timelapse.. with a couple of CG's thrown in. The one on Bells line was letting out massive CG's but the lack of views to the N in the mountains is bad. Interesting in timelapse there was rotation in the updraft? What the? Sounding may explain it.. decent turning.
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_vdX5_d-Sw

[Jimmy Deguara]

Ben,

There were two young men near Mt Charles area that stopped and jumped up the rock wall for views - was that you two? These had just arrived after we were passing through.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Michael Bath]

With the amount of lightning and how the storms looked on VIS I was a little surprised no STWs were issued yesterday (over inland NSW). Seems wind gusts did approach severe at places.


Storms split NSW

Paddy Aicken, Sunday January 4, 2009 - 20:16 EDT
A narrow bands of thunderstorms divided NSW in two this afternoon.

The thunderstorms developed along the back edge of a trough this afternoon when a large body of dry stable air converged with moist tropical air from the north.

The thunderstorms produced wind gusts of over 70 kilometres per hour. At Parkes the maximum wind gust was 72 km/h, which was the strongest wind gust in more than a month.

Although the storms were not classified as severe they also produced some heavy rainfalls. Glen Alice recorded 32 millimetres which is their heaviest fall in a little over a month. Nearby Clarence recorded some 25 millimetres, while Chifley recorded 18 millimetres.

Despite producing a large amount of threatening lightening the storms didn't pass across the Great Dividing Ranges and the Sydney Basin remained dry.

- Weatherzone

[Ben]

Ben,

There were two young men near Mt Charles area that stopped and jumped up the rock wall for views - was that you two? These had just arrived after we were passing through.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

Haha!! Yes that was us 2, trying to get views of the CG's dropping down in the valley.. by which at that stage the storm had moved a bit far away to see anymore CG's!

[Jimmy Deguara]

Ben we were passing through after having endured the core and trying to get a better position near Bell if other storms had to develop. Did not take long before we headed back home. However, I think the storm pulsed at some stage whilst in the Wollemi.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

Some thundery activity developed briefly over the Glenorie region early this afternoon 5th January 2009. I could see several lightning strikes from my region - pity the drier air undercut the developing line.

A couple of pictures follow:











All photos for 5 January 2009

[Antonio (stormboy)]

i wish we could have some thunderstorms develop but it looks hopeless here in the northern rivers no storm are in the forecast at all its a bummer but hopefully it will not last too long and well get it better than the others.





stormboy

[Ben]

Good photos Jimmy. It took me by surprise those cells, nice updrafts at first as it hit some moisture then died as the drier air undercut it as you said. If we had a bit more moisture depth yesterday it could have been quite interesting, shear was good enough for at least some severe storms. Tomorrow looks our next chance - I'm unsure as to if GFS is over or underdoing moisture. Since the dp is -3 today at Mt Boyce I'd be moreso expecting lower dp's, but models do show a significant increase in moisture tomorrow, though only to around 14c or so. However all models show some sort of precip and now BoM have included storms. Shear looks better the further S you go, and the cap should be fine as GFS is underdoing sfc temps. Maybe some high based storms tomorrow?