Topic: Dust Storms, Severe Thunderstorms, Wind, Rain & Snow over Southeast Australia: 19 - 27 Sep 2009

[Michael Bath]

Models are tipping a significant rain and wind event over large parts of Southeast Australia from Monday. We might see some dust storms ahead of the rain too.

Southeast to brace for stormy week
Martin Palmer, Saturday September 19, 2009 - 14:59 EST
South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania will need to batten down the hatches next week, as low pressure systems line up to batter the southeast.

It will begin on Monday, as a complex low pressure system sweeps into the Bight. Northerly winds will begin to strengthen over South Australia as a secondary low feeds south into a deeper system. The combination will drive increasingly strong winds ahead of it.

By Tuesday winds will, if anything, be stronger, with projected gusts up to 110km/h in the Adelaide area.

The system will drive winds into the rest of the southeast during Monday, reaching Melbourne later in the day. Tuesday will be particularly windy for Victoria. Currently it appears the worst could impact later in the day as a low approaches from the southwest and a front sweeps through.

Gust speeds up to 135km/h are possible in the most exposed areas along the coast and ranges of Victoria.

A series of lows and fronts will then rattle through during the week, bringing further pulses of gale force winds. Potentially damaging gusts above 90km/h are possible right across South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania at least until Friday. Keep up with the latest at weatherzone.com.au

- Weatherzone

[Michael Bath]

There were a couple of significant thunderstorms in northeast South Australia (northeast Pastoral district) yesterday afternoon and evening.

Warnings were issued at 6pm and continued until 2.30am 20th Sep.

Oodnadatta took a direct hit with gusts to 117km/h and heavy rain - 10mm in 4 minutes at one point. The cell can be seen on satpics for about 7 hours.

Sounding for Woomera to the south. Plug in the Oodnadatta obs and it's rather unstable. 

[Richary]

We just had a small thunderstorm pass overhead. Not as much rain as I would have expected looking at the radar, fair amount of thunder but any visible lightning was all up in the sky. Still a nice early start to the season. Let's hope this year is better than last summer!

[Antonio (stormboy)]

It has been another very nice week and warm. The good part is that for the next 2 days thunderstorms in the afternoon are forecast for NE NSW and SE QLD. So hopefully a good lightning show is near.

storm boy

[Colin Maitland]

For SEQ, Monday and Tuesday there may be the odd chance of a little thundery rain in and around Stanthorpe, Warwick,etc ( which could be short lived due to the fast moving band)  and once that clears out, there is a very dry strong ridge or trough that will bring in very hot North westerly winds. This will increase the risk of fire and warnings will most probably be issued.

By Friday a third  trough will be come through and due the dryness of the air, no cloud or rain will accompany this trough eastwards at this stage. ( According to  BOM)

So besides a slight chance on Monday of thundery rain for  inland areas  it is looking gloomy for storms up here. It is going to be a hot windy week and fire could be our main concern. { Time for a storm dance:)}

Brisbane outlook is :

Forecast for Monday
Fine. Mostly cloudy with light to moderate N to NW winds, tending moderate N to
NE in the afternoon.                     

Precis:       Fine, mostly cloudy.                     
City:         Min 17    Max 31
Bayside:      Min 15    Max 29
UV Alert:     8:30 am to 2:50 pm, UV Index predicted to reach 8 [Very High]

Tuesday       Fine and hot. Windy.                   Min 19    Max 33
Wednesday     Dry. Gusty W to SW change.             Min 19    Max 30
Thursday      Dry.                                   Min 14    Max 28
Friday        Fine.                                  Min 12    Max 29
Saturday      Fine.                                  Min 16    Max 31
Sunday        Fine.                                  Min 14    Max 29

The humidity is so low.

It is like our surfing safaris we used to do, when there were no waves we used to be the most crankiest, depressed blokes around. Now its happening with storms.


The NSW mid coast is looking promising for storms (Coffs Harbour ETC) Monday and Tuesday,

Col

[Harley Pearman]

Western Sydney Thunderstorm 20/9/2009

There were three thunderstorms that passed over the Sydney Basin during the afternoon of 20/9/2009. The first one passed over Campbelltown region, a second one passed over the Windsor region (Outer North West Sydney) which produced a rain shower and at least five audible thunderclaps including a single cloud to ground lightning strike mid afternoon but the third I believe was the best of the three.

I took a handful of photographs at Prospect just prior to it. Following that, I drove into the core of it experiencing some quite solid rain but no hail. However the raindrops were large. Some moderate downdrafts were experienced at the rear of the storm followed by a period of continuous thunder which became less frequent as the storm passed further away to the North East.

The event produced 10 mm of rain at Kings Langley, 6.8 mm of rain at Solander Road - Kings Langely, 7 mm at Baulkham Hills, 7.5 mm at Baulkham Hills Swimming Pool, 7.2 mm at Hornsby and 6 mm at Turramurra. The storm was relatively narrow as it tracked in a North East direction across Western and Northern Sydney.

The photo taken below includes a small lightning flash. The scene is at William Lawson Park Prospect looking west off Myrtle Street moments before the storm hit approximately 2 km south of where I live.

Harley Pearman

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

My main target for storms was Sydney so it was here where I remained until the more substantial cell came through from near Jenolan. It had reasonable structure given it was high based. The storm was long lived and isolated. Hail was reported from the cell though it was moving too fast and even on the M2 motorway was I even able to catch up. The following photographs were taken from Rune's favourite lookout at Quakers Hill. I have timelapse of the cell as well and those cloud base to cloud base lightning were captured.











Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[pingtang]

Todays chase involved a trip to the Southern Highlands which proved fruitless. Cumulus dominated much of the sky, and this was high based and moisture starved. A 20-25kt westerly at the surface and 4-5c d'ps had me worried,so we immediately returned to the coast as congestus towers appeared a little healthier down that way. We got back to Nowra and immediately got onto a developing cell which went up on the edge of the sea breeze. The storm was weak and extremely high based but it did produce a handful of quality CG's. One of the cgs was a quality staccato which hit 3kms from us, of which I nailed on video.  Another CG was a clear air, striking into clear blue sky. The storm rapidly moved out to sea and decayed.

We noticed another lot of cells to our west near Yass . The anvil from these storms blanketed our area preventing any further convection.

[enak_12]

Storms look promising for Tuesday for the Mid North Coast, nice wind shear suggested by GFS, good turning and quite stong. To bad I'm working from 5-8pm I'll probably miss some great lightning off shore because of this . I think a couple of severe storms might be possible in the area late in the afternoon? And even an off Shore SC later after dark? What do others think? wish I was working tomorrow instead of Tue's dam it, I would of headed south maybe to Nambucca. I think this will likely see the first severe storms of spring for the MNC

http://shear-atmos-fear.deviantart.com/

[Antonio (stormboy)]

Some powerful and full of lightning storms in the southeast this morning in the Ceduna area in SA. Just look at all the lightning strikes in this image. Today’s the day hopefully for some nice storms

stormboy

[David C]

Last week I spoke with Jimmy about this next upper trough, which looks to be ejecting out over the eastern states on Tuesday, as one of those potentially significant negative-tilt upper troughs that can produce tornadoes. In this particular case it looks like it might be a good rain system but anything is possible!  

[Michael Bath]

There's a couple of very strong cells showing on the Adelaide radar - even at 250ks out. Left mover through Cleve area looks dangerous.

The low level shear is fairly exceptional for AU - tornadoes do look possible!

Adelaide 00z

Woomera 00z


The tail of cloud extending from the strongest cell is very interesting too. VIS at 00Z attached.

[Michael Bath]

Two news reports from ABC.

The first is about the Oodnadatta storm on Saturday afternoon.

The outback town of Oodnadatta was hit by a violent squall on Saturday night as 26 millimetres of rain fell in less than 30 minutes and winds of 117 kilometres caused damage.

It is believed a new five-metre high shed was completely destroyed in the squall, which began at about 6:00 pm local time.

The community on Sunday was still coming to terms with the damage.

Narelle Fullarton, who runs Allandale Station, says a new shed collapsed on top of two trucks at the station in the frightening storm.

"You couldn't see from our outside kitchen to the end of the carport, which is probably only a couple of hundred metres [away]," she said.

"We've just put up a brand new truck shed ... and the wind got into that and most of that is up on the hill and on the roof of our house."

Despite the damage, Ms Fullarton was keeping positive in the aftermath.

"The only one advantage is the creek's full, because we had about 40 mills in 10 minutes," she said.

"But that wasn't really a true reading because the top of the rain gauge blew off, so I presume there would have been another 30 mills on top of that."

Matt Collopy from the weather bureau says storms are continuing this morning.

"There's not much in the way of radar coverage up that way," he said.

"But we do have a lightning detection network which shows a lot of lightning flashing away up around the Oodnadatta area still.

"So while we don't expect those particular storms to be severe, there's certainly still storms hanging around that way and we're watching them quite closely.

"I think they're a pretty hardy bunch up that way, and they do see storms and so forth, not regularly, but it's not out of the ordinary to see gusty thunderstorms across that part of South Australia.

"So whilst this is a very strong gust, it's something that they would have seen in some form or another in the past."

And the second is about large hail that has hit the Eyre Peninsula

Huge hailstones and lightning have been reported as severe storms move across South Australia.

A fierce storm has damaged property at Elliston on western Eyre Peninsula as it hit the town just before 9:00am ACST.

Andrea Taylor at the local caravan park said the storm dumped hailstones up to three centimetres in diameter.

"There's some dents on bonnets, roofs, sunroofs are damaged," she said.

"I've rung up the council and they've got damage done to their cars.

"It was a quite ferocious little storm. There was rain after the white stuff and a massive thunderstorm. I saw lightning strike one of the trees in the park."

The weather bureau has issued storm and gale warnings as the severe weather passes across the state.

- ABC

[Carlos E]

Ugh I am so angry atm. >_>

I'm in Melbourne for an event I'm attending, and Adelaide has some of the most impressive looking storms I've ever seen on its radar. A very dark storm  went right over Moonta. I hope it hasn't caused too much damage, as it wasn't a happy looking one.

[Mike]

I noticed the sounding and radar images this morning, MB.  Whopping shear with nothing under 50kts in the lowers to some extent!  The cells I viewed this morning on the radar were very impressive.  Jane was online at the time I was viewing and suggested she drop everything and find an intercept location for this line moving through!  Am confident of some amazing photos and reports as this system moves on.