Topic: NE NSW / SE QLD Storms 29 Sep - 3 Oct 2011

[Jason(pato)]

Saturday 1st October 2011

A few pictures from around my neighbourhood this arvo, the fast moving nature of these storms didn't warrant a full chase.

First round of action was a bit featureless but did manage some nice mammatus at the back end. Also the storm off Evans Head around 2pm.





Wasn't sure if the next line would be all the inspiring but it did surprise with some nice structure accompanied by gusty winds and some big fat heavy rain drops which must have been verging on hail. CG activity really started to ramp up as the cell approached the coast probably due to the interaction of better moisture on the coastal fringe. Anyway here's the pics from around the corner from my place.



Closer shot of feature on right of pic above. There was some nice upmotion at this point.



The southern end of the shelf cloud feature was interesting as well.



Couldn't resist a panorama....it just looked so good. Apologies for the powerlines, it was a case of shoot as quick as possible and the lines were unavoidable.



Hope you enjoy,

Cheers Jason

[Michael Bath]

Thanks for your report Jase.

Been a very active day but very coastal with much better dew points along the NSW Far North Coast than elsewhere. There's been pretty much storms just off the Gold Coast and Tweed Coast since dawn (and some of those over land). The best event was a likely supercell that formed locally and tracked over Kingscliff. Plenty of hail reported from that. Check the webcam timelapse images.

Activity became more widespread early afternoon as a brief wind shift improved moisture. Had a storm here at 2.15pm which dropped the temp to 12, saw some updraft lightning and copped 2.5mm in a short time.

It was clear for a while then a line moved in from the WNW. It was very weak at first but then tapped into the Northern Rivers moisture and developed a nice shelf cloud feature. Hail was reported at Ballina when it passed through there.

These pics from McLeans Ridges

[enak_12]

This pretty cool shelf cloud rolled by Sawtell today. Earlier while I was working I heard a fair bit of thunder from in side Target.

This is viewed from Bonville Creek



rain made it hard to shoot lightning, I tried from inside my car however.

[Dan Stewart]

sawtell western shelf cloud

awesome shelf cloud wish i had been there earlier and wish there was some more lightning but no point complaining.. could have been a dead day

[Paul D]

Nice to see some structure in everyones pics. Certainly turned out a bit more interesting than I was expecting.
Drove through the Northern rivers yesterday One of the best view of the storms including lightning was driving across the Clarence river on the narrow old bridge where stopping to take pics wasn't an option....
my missus snapped these couple through the windscreen near Casino




Caught up to it at balina where it was bucketing down
bit later on the tweed looking SW from near Chinderah



Cheers
Paul D

[Paul D]

Thursday 29th September 2011

Encountered some hail and strong winds from storms on the 29th of September near Kempsey
The first storm which had a fair bit of hail was roughly W/WSW of Kempsey and traveling app SE/SSE toward Pt Macquarie. The first pic is looking WN from Hastings River Drive (west of Pt Macquarie near Highway) at app 3:45pm



I drove through the east side of the core and encountered hail for about 15km of driving from a few km's nth of Telegraph Point through to the almost the start of the Kempsey Bypass a few km's south of Kempsey.
Nothing too huge size max hail was around 2cm but it was intense enough that combined with some nice wind gusts caused all the highway traffic to line up in droves on the sides of the highway leaving me a nice clear run to putt along on my own.

Looking Sth -SE at the Pt Macquarie storm from Kempsey at 4-25pm app




Not long after this storm there was another ENE moving storm front at Kempsey and NW that registered some wind gusts over 90km's an hour at kempsey airport.

ENE moving Kempsey storm looking WNW 5:10pm app

Kempsey airport recorded gusts of 95 &93 km/hr at around 5:12 and 5:30pm
Date time   direction Wnd Sp Gusts Km/h   AP
29/05:45pm    WSW     22    50      1003.3
29/05:33pm    WSW    41    76      1003.3
29/05:30pm    WSW    63    95      1003.1
29/05:12pm    WSW    57    93      1001.6
29/05:10pm    WSW    50    72      1001.3

Kempsey copped a few gusts causing a few trees to get knocked over
tree damage at woolies 5-20pm

tree on ute


The worst damage I noticed was to the WNW of Kempsey near Willawarin (just to SE)  in a line going NE for at least couple of km's where trees took down powerlines, blocked driveways, and I spent about 30min going 2k's shifting branches and logs off the road (thats the ones which weren't already shifted off to allow access through.)
In more exposed areas in a quick survey up to app 10% of trees showed some damage and around half of those showed more extensive damage.
couple of examples





All the tree damage appeared to be straight line damage roughly in the same direction to the ENE/NE


Night shot of the storms receding out to sea


Paul D