Storm Australian Severe Weather Forum

Severe Weather Discussion => Australian Severe Storms, Weather Events and Storm Chasing => Topic started by: Michael Bath on 27 February 2008, 07:52:46 AM

Title: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Michael Bath on 27 February 2008, 07:52:46 AM
A few cells have developed over central parts of NSW mainly on the ranges so far. The soundings this morning suggest good potential for hailstorms with the dry air aloft and nice lapse rates.


EDIT - BoM have just issued a STW:

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
for LARGE HAILSTONES and DAMAGING WIND
For people in the ILLAWARRA, CENTRAL TABLELANDS and parts of the HUNTER, SOUTHERN TABLELANDS and CENTRAL WEST SLOPES Forecast Districts.

Issued at 2:13 pm Tuesday, 26 February 2008.


Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce large hailstones and damaging winds in the warning area over the next several hours. Locations which may be affected include Nowra, Orange, Mudgee, Bathurst, Katoomba and Goulburn.


Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: TroyVR on 27 February 2008, 10:54:48 AM
Just heard over the police scanner that it's hailing at Albion park, No indication of the size of the hail.
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: striker92 on 27 February 2008, 11:19:05 AM
Hey guys
we just had a really severe storm here south of wollongong
The storm tracked up the coast and at the moment is hitting just north of Wollongong. Hear at Albion Park we had some large Hail with some stones up to 4cm in diameter. Lots of thunder and lightning and some very heavy Rain.
Ive heard reports of flash flooding at port kembla and hail large enough to smash car windows
sorry i have no pics but cannon have my cannon >.<
cheers guys
Mark.
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: bondiman on 27 February 2008, 01:09:00 PM
Well that was a totally awesome storm lasting at least 20 minutes, heaps of rip-roaring thunder (very loud at times), lightning (with numerous flangs right outside my office window), very torrential whiteout rain and even some marble-sized hail lasting a few minutes with some squalls. Flash flooding around my street. The huge red/orange cell went directly over the CBD & eastern suburbs. Rain from this event - 18mm at Ob Hill and 22mm for Rose Bay.

(Had to add this, the crate that we use to throw junk mail in was washed off our footpath & found a few hundred metres down the road jammed under a car, just went to fetch it).
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: TroyVR on 27 February 2008, 01:51:31 PM
Sutherland shire didn't get much, some light rain and a few flashes of lightning.

God i hate living here, we always miss the good stuff.
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Jimmy Deguara on 27 February 2008, 02:26:15 PM
Hi guys,

I headed hout and met Nick Moir at Rooty Hill and waited. We tried to intercept the cell south of Campbelltown - but we hit traffic and also I took the wrong turn off. So we did an about face and then Nick headed for the M5. I headed up the M7.

Then I saw the towers exploding at the back end. I turned east of Horsley Park. You think I could ever catch up? No matter what I did the traffic lights and traffic just kept me out of the core by about 3 km. I then decided to head back home. Only a few pics today! Not a fan of driving in Sydney chasing storms. So many panic hazards.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: James on 27 February 2008, 02:54:35 PM
A couple of pics from today ....

First is of the early cell over Lithgow that extended out towards Blizz's area. Some nice rumbles and updraft region however it suffered from a low DP and light winds.

(http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-01jh.thumbnail.jpg) (http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-01jh.jpg)

An area of updrafts I passed under earlier near Mt Tomah were starting to get their act together. I stopped just to the east of Mt Tomah and watched a nice dumping of 1cm hail fall until this base below came into view.

(http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-02jh.thumbnail.jpg) (http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-02jh.jpg)

This base would evolve into the severe storm that battered Bilpin and moved off to the Central Coast later that afternoon. Below are pictures of the hail that fell over the next hour in Bilpin with a flash flooding shot. Stones ranged from 1-2cm with the odd 3cm thrown in sporadically towards the start. At one point the Bells became an ice rink, was amazing to watch.

(http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-03jh.thumbnail.jpg) (http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-03jh.jpg)

(http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-04jh.thumbnail.jpg) (http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-04jh.jpg)

(http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-06jh.jpg.thumbnail.jpg) (http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-06jh.jpg.jpg)

(http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-07jh.jpg.thumbnail.jpg) (http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-07jh.jpg.jpg)

(http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-08jh.jpg.thumbnail.jpg) (http://sydneystormchasers.com/system/files/images/08-02-26-08jh.jpg.jpg)
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: James on 27 February 2008, 02:55:44 PM
Forgot to mention there is a really nice looking cell on Canberra Radar near Braidwood. Cell appears to be splitting judging by the latest radar scans.
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Jimmy Deguara on 27 February 2008, 03:46:18 PM
James,

Very nice storm in the area - certainly looked good on radar for some time. Nice ground cover - having not moved much assisted there:)

A few of my pictures - not much to report from under the cells from my perspective:

Cell preceeding the squall line and then dominating towards Wollongong

(http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2008/0226jd01.jpg)

updrafts rapidly developing almost overhead - I could not stop
(http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2008/0226jd07.jpg)

Mature cell close to the coast at this point - racing away! Note the hail shafts - there was stripped leaves near Flemington Markets marking the northern edge of the storm.
(http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2008/0226jd13.jpg)

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Richary on 27 February 2008, 04:09:02 PM
Nothing much at Rydalmere. The cell that passed over Bankstown towards the city about 6:30 had some nice inflow (winds changed direction here and came up quite strong - also visible on the lower cloud/scud movement), lots of thunder but no lightning. Later saw some hits over to the east. As I write this though there is lots of lightning building to the west from another cell, some quite bright. The storm heading towards me from west of Parramatta isn't intense on radar but certainly generating lots of activity.
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: TroyVR on 27 February 2008, 04:19:05 PM
If you want a good indication of where the weather is, it pays off to listen to the police frequency on your CB, if you don't have access to that sort of equipment, this website offers a live stream of the Sydney police band thats free to listen to.

They will often report in if they are in a storm.

http://www.livepolice.info/
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: scottme on 28 February 2008, 03:11:24 AM

The cell that hit the Sydney CBD about 6:20pm looked quite spectacular. It was rather green and had quite strong rotation on the north flank before it collapsed somewhat. No pics unfortunately.
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: vrondes on 28 February 2008, 07:29:56 AM
Just caught  the squall line after work as it came across the Olympic site and headed east. Yes there was certainly some real time rotation in a cell that developed over Silverwater around 6pm, this lasted for a few minutes before decaying. The main cell heading east over Flemington certainly produced some very heavy rain and frequent cg's. The following photos are of the only cg I captured and a nice rainbow  from the outflow. Cheers, Con.

(http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w28/elenecon/Storms%20season%2007-08/0-13.jpg)
(http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w28/elenecon/Storms%20season%2007-08/0-12.jpg)
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Jimmy Deguara on 28 February 2008, 10:14:03 AM
Nice base there Con. It was what I wanted to go after the whole time but failed to get into position. I am glad you were in some decent position to get a view of it!

One thing I can say about this was just south of Fairfield near the Hume Highway turn off, the storm began to produce lightning bolts from the back shear anvil - at least I saw in succession of about 3 minutes. Nice!

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Mike on 29 February 2008, 06:24:51 AM
Beaut storm from what I viewed on the TV last night.  The network showed footage of a massive dome just alive with lightning with dome to ground strikes galore.  The structure was excellent to look at, huge cauliflower head.  Some of the hail photos posted actually looks like it snowed!  Received an email from chasers in the 'Gong who said the storm was going nuts there, they chased for over 650km round trip from start to finish - commitment!  I should have some photos to post once they send them to me.
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: pingtang on 29 February 2008, 09:06:27 AM
Great photos and reports everyone.

We chased the Wollongong area on the 26th. We encountered a lot of hail in the Robertson area with some stones reaching 3cm maybe slightly larger than this. We then followed the storm down the escarpment and finally got ahead of the torrential rain/hail after Albion Park allowing us to see a large ominous base.  Unfortunately we never quite got out of the rain - it was always raining lightly ahead of the storm making photography difficult. We got another round of torrential rain as the storm closed in at Port Kembla. This lead to some nice flash flooding, with some roads covered in a foot of water. Numerous cars had ducked for cover(trees, bridges etc) expecting big hail, but we didn't get anything over 2cms which surprised me. We also witnessed a flang fest near Wollongong, with 3 flangs within 200 metres in under 10 seconds, and a total of 8 close flangs in less than a minute. An exciting chase.

I also went for a local chase to Kiama yesterday encountering a nice storm with a shelf/rollcloud and a nice dark rain free base. This storm produced 30 knot plus outflow winds in Shellharbour. Very little lightning in it though which was really surprising, but this was a feature with a lot of the storms yesterday. I found some hail drifts near Kiama as well. I have a small video from yesterdays chase if anyone is interested. Cheers.

http://au.youtube.com/pingtang666
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Jimmy Deguara on 29 February 2008, 03:35:11 PM
Nice to hear the hailstones vibrating on the vehicle Pintang.

I did not chase on the 27th February but did walk across the road for some high based structure. Some pictures follow:

Morning altocumulus castellanus
(http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2008/0227jd02.jpg)

The goats are becoming famous now! First time was with the comet!
(http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2008/0227jd03.jpg)

Pretty detached base developed whilst I was at this position and then the rain started shortly after.
(http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2008/0227jd08.jpg)

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara
Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: vrondes on 29 February 2008, 04:33:39 PM
Yes Jimmy, it was a nice base with some decent rotation, wish I had a video camera to record it. The shot below
reveals the structure at it's best before it lost momentum. Tuesday 26-02-08.

(http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w28/elenecon/Storms%20season%2007-08/0-17.jpg)

Also Jimmy , I believe the following shot is also of that detached base  from Wednesday 27-02-08, but taken from Parramatta  looking NW.


(http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w28/elenecon/Storms%20season%2007-08/0-16.jpg)

The following anvil lightning shots were taken after the storm hit Parramatta around 7 pm. Torrential rain with
embedded lightning. Lucky to salvage these captures .

(http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w28/elenecon/Storms%20season%2007-08/0-15.jpg)

Decaying storm with crawlers illuminating the remnants of mammatus.

(http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w28/elenecon/Storms%20season%2007-08/0-14.jpg)

Cheers, Con.   By the way , nice video sequence there pingtang.




Title: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: enak_12 on 29 February 2008, 05:53:16 PM
This is how today's storms (Thurs 28th Feb) looked as it came through Coffs. A gust of wind was recorded at 74kmh from this storm, certainly was windy on the headland. Not much lightning around though.

(http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c172/enak12/February%2028%202008/IMG_5876copy.jpg)

(http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c172/enak12/February%2028%202008/IMG_5865copy.jpg)

(http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c172/enak12/February%2028%202008/IMG_5849copy.jpg)

(http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c172/enak12/February%2028%202008/IMG_5888copy.jpg)

(http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c172/enak12/February%2028%202008/IMG_5819copy.jpg)

(http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c172/enak12/February%2028%202008/IMG_5954copy.jpg)
Title: Re: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Michael Bath on 01 March 2008, 02:59:03 AM
Interesting structure there Kane - nothing made it this far north. I only managed to see some weak lightning to the far south and southwest early evening from Ballina.

MB
Title: Re: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Brad Hannon on 01 March 2008, 01:03:58 PM
I did not chase on the 27th February but did walk across the road for some high based structure.
Mate, you must've been exhausted after that distance! hahaha so now you hold the world record for the longest distance covered on a chase and also the shortest!  Guinness Book do I hear anyone mention?

Brad
Title: Re: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Jimmy Deguara on 01 March 2008, 01:19:30 PM
Brad,

Haha one has to watch those fuel prices. I got too lazy to open the gate for the car. Ideally if it had turned out better, then I would have been better off with the car given there is the tripod in the boot etc. Also when it started to rain, the car would have been ideal to photograph from.

What amazed once several years ago, we were looking for good spots to film and photograph from looking north during a chase. Then we went onto my balcony and that was better than any spot around! We wasted a reasonable amount of time looking for it. So crossing the road especially for higher based storms is not too bad for any storms that come within say 15km from Schofields.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara
Title: Re: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Harley Pearman on 02 March 2008, 09:06:51 AM
Hello

The evening thunderstorm of 27/2/2008 produced a beautiful lightning bolt to the north and close to where I live that hit an electricity transformer blowing it up. The explosions and green flashes were amazing to see. No photos taken but I certainly heard the explosion from it.

Shortly after, I saw two fire engines and other emergency vehicles race west along Blacktown Road assuming they were called out to deal with the resulting fire and blackout.

Shortly before this storm, I took some photos of some interesting cloud structure south of Prospect.

The storm cell produced a burst of heavy rain and moderate winds and a few cloud to ground lightning strikes with one hitting that nearby transformer.

Harley Pearman
Title: Re: RE: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Peter J on 03 March 2008, 04:49:28 PM
I did not chase on the 27th February but did walk across the road for some high based structure. Some pictures follow:

I think you now put a new slant on the words to "storm chase" - when vehicles are hard to come by, amazing how available shank's pony is!

Big Pete
(rolling on the floor in rapturous laughter).
Title: Re: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Jeff Brislane on 09 March 2008, 04:33:57 AM
Did anyone else see the rotating cell near Blacktown on Wednesday the 27th of February? It had great compact Lp type structure for a while before it disapated in classic LP style from the base up. It had visable rotation which I watched from a Train as I headed home from the city at around 6pm. I didn't have a camera unfortunately.

I took numerous photos of the Bilpin cell on the 26th from Penrith. It produced some nice mamatus and lingered for quite a long time.

Jeff.
Title: Re: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: Jimmy Deguara on 09 March 2008, 06:39:31 AM
Hi Jeff,

I did not see any rotation personally but there was a cell that passed to my south that put up an updraft that initially was interesting. The anvils from other cells destroyed the party I guess.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara
Title: Re: NSW and Sydney Storms: 26-28 Feb 2008
Post by: vrondes on 09 March 2008, 07:33:30 PM
Jeff, Is this first photo the rotating cell you mention. I photographed this from Parramatta looking towards Blacktown around 6.15pm on the 27th.  I had checked the radar around 6pm before going down the road from home. It showed this feature as the last stages of an intense cell that had matured earlier over the Campbelltown area. It exhibited quite a tight structure  for about 5 minutes before decaying. I didn't see rotation from where I was, again a video may have helped. Still, it displayed a very light precip curtain behind the rain free base of the cell. I headed out for a look because of an intensifying line of cells to the west which Jimmy had observed as well. Thanks for bringing it up, I had forgotten about it.

(http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w28/elenecon/Storms%20season%2007-08/0-21.jpg)

This second shot is of a tiered cloud feature  taken over Homebush that extended out from that LP type cell structure that you saw Jeff. It went on to produce heavy showers in the east.

(http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w28/elenecon/Storms%20season%2007-08/0-20.jpg)

Cheers, Con.