Hey all. Been a fair while since I posted - so apologies. I've been fairly busy with other storm related issues other than photography!
The storm that Renate and I chased was severe warned about midway through our chase - we did not know that of course until we reached our final destination. We initially went rural as the leading edge of this system was beginning to ramp up. I decided to chase about 45km inland and see how this thing was going to mature. Radar images looked pretty safe and showed a lot of potential. Steering winds were SE and they were heading NW, but some of the better structure within the storm system was moving north. We captured some nice shots as the storm gathered momentum and I said to Renate that we really needed to keep in front of this system and let it chase us and relocate much further north. I chose Mandorah which is about 75km from Darwin on the other side of the harbor, it actually overlooks Darwin itself and this appealed to me to see this beast covering the coastline as it came in.
We only encountered shower activity on the western edge of the storm, which was okay by me because there was a dry area between cells and the road direction was taking us directly in front of all the action anyway. DP's for that time were hovering around 25-26 and CAPE was well into the 5000 mark. I have since found out that there was some lowering from this storm on the NW side. I did catch a glimpse of something during the drive but views were obscured by trees. A photo I shall post shows it and it's not scud or inflow tags.
Once we reached Mandorah it was a blessing...the whole shelf cloud was covering the entire breadth of Darwin and suburbs both sides and came in quickly. The rain obviously came with it as it passed overhead, but it ended just at the right time. All the CG's were located directly in front of us no more than 200 metres away. A lot of photos I've seen from other people back in Darwin show all the lightning at our location - poor us!
The lightning was the best I've seen for quite a while and they were all multiples most of the time, something I'm not always seeing when out and about. The bureau has received a report from me as none of their spotters did one and no chaser went from woe to go as we did - how odd given the size of it! They were keen to read what we saw and how it unfolded. There was some light tree debris near our location and winds I guesstimated were around 45-50kts with gusts.
The storms had intensified quite a lot once they moved offshore from Wagait Beach - 2km from where we were...we headed down there for some more shots, but we had had our fill and decided to call it quits for the day.
Here's some of my shots from the arvo/night.
