Topic: 1947 New Year's Day Hailstorm Sydney

[Jimmy Deguara]

At least some of you may have been aware of this major event in Sydney way back in 1947 as a supercell tracked across the Liverpool to Sydney path. Giant hailstones thumped suburbs and many people were injured. Here is the wikipedia article on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Sydney_hailstorm

There is even a photograph show in the article I had not known about. (Incidently the photograph is now considered public domain). Photographer: Bob Rice (Sydney Sun)

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Geoff Thurtell]

My father used to recall this storm quite frequently! On the day, he was playing cricket at Concord. They could see the dark storm clouds and hear the thunder but Concord did not get a drop of rain. He could recall the heat and oppressive humidity of the day, even in his older years. As my father returned home that evening (at that time he lived in Forest Lodge - Glebe, near the city) the damage from the storm became more apparent as he got closer to the city. His mother's home sustained some cracked roof tiles but the worst damage was to the east of the city. This event was clear in my father's mind right up until just before his death.

Regards,

Geoff Thurtell

[David C]

Some large stones floating about in that pic above! Is this the storm that dumped hail and very little rain (anecdotally)?

[Jimmy Deguara]

David,

In the presentation by Dick Whitaker on Wednesday night, there obviously was no mention of the type of supercell mentioned. I am surprised that the word "super-cell" was used in the first place given the term was founded in the 1950's - obviously it was suggested after the event. Whether it was a classic or HP is unknown - very heavy rainfall and flash flooding as well as internal water damage in houses also occurred in some suburbs. This tends to dispell the hypothesis of an LP supercell. If the storm organised rapidly with a new updraft, one should not be surprised of a huge overhang dropping massive chunks of hail in some areas with little or no rainfall.

The question begs: was this hailstorm potentially more damaging than the Sydney hailstorm April 14 1999? Given the observations of hail size, I see no real evidence of one being more intense than the other. It goes down to the fact that 1947 had a sparse population and thus not as much observations into the database. However, I recall Rob Webb suggesting there were so many reports of hail 10 to 11cm, that they accepted that as a new maxmimum hail size.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara