Topic: Saturday 19th February 2006 Severe multicells

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

With a trough extending southeast into Sydney, storms were always going to be nearby! Despite the strong cap, high based convection lead to strong to severe storms across the western suburbs.

One in particular gave a barage of lightning near Rooty Hill - one lightning bolt almost struck me literally! I felt a spike come through my shoe! Lightning within 50 metres! I guess I should have taken cover prior. I did get into the car quick smart.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Matthew Piper]

Geeze thats too close for comfort Jimmy 

A storm around 9pm last night was the best of the day for me It let fly a couple of reasonably close CG's and dumped plenty of rain (15mm in total with a peak rain rate of around 48mm/hour).

[David C]

I told you Jimmy, you better watch yourself! Could you determine whether what you felt at your feet was your own reaction, a shockwave or static electricity. Sounds like a very close call.

[Dave Nelson]

  hi guys 
              actually   saturday was the 18th feb   )

    we did a chase up almost to mudgee  but ended up on the tail of thise storms that continued to move out towards the
Gosford coast.
    cutting back down to bathurst  then on to katoomba  we intercepted 2 separate storms,  one prior to sunset that the centre
passed jst to the south of echo point.   got some nice pics of the 3 sisters as the low angle sun popped out from the tail of the storm
and lit up the rock structures with really nice contrasts.

   the second cell came over soon after dark  .... part of that stormline that stretched diagonally across the state ...
    it produced a lot of good CG's and many CC's and lasted till around 2030hrs EDT  when the system started to die out

   all in all a good day out 

cheers
Dave N

[Jeff Brislane]

Jimmy, you have to get a 2006 calendar mate!

I stayed close to home on Saturday and saw some nice storms and some awesome lightning. Jimmy i was watching the lightning that was occuring near you when you almost got struck from orchard hills. That cell was quite a good lightning producer, however some cells that formed west of Penrith around the same time weren't as good and only produced the occaisoinal bolt.

Earlier in the day I witnessed an LP style cell intensify just south east of Kingswood. It produced a nice little lowered base and vault and started to rotate! I know, I was rubbing my eyes but it was certainly rotating, albeit only weakly. It then produced a nice rear flank downdraught that basically ate away the base of the storm and killed it.

Later on at around 930pm we had another cell go through Penrith which produced some sporadic lightning bolts. The highlight was a nearby strike where the thunder literally sounded like three seperate explosions. It was very strange.

[Jeff Brislane]

Heres the first storm on Saturday afternoon south east of kingswood that showed some weak rotation in order.

[Jeff Brislane]

and the last two.

[Jeff Brislane]

The next three photos in order are the storm that nearly fried Jimmy, firstly the nice base near my place that was dropping lots of cg's, then the outflow from orchard hills later on closer to when Jimmy had his close encounter and the last one was the later storm that hardly produced a bolt.

[David C]

Nice pics Jeff,

the last pic has the appearance of a typical high-based prolific Cg producer. It is interesting that it was not so active as compared to the earlier cells.

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi Jeff and David,

The sequence of photographs from that event are listed here:

http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/new/jd20060223.html  the sequence beginning at

http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2006/0218jd09.jpg   and ending at

http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2006/0218jd28.jpg

http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/new/jd2006022302.html

This is the photograph



that eventually followed the lightning active cell - not much height to it - a few cloud to cloud activity and it as I suggest below it became active briefly as it headed southeast and east of Quakers Hill.

We ended up heading to Quakers Hill after returning the poor sick Ray, and then headed to Rooty Hill back to Quakers Hill and then on to Rooty Hill during the evening. We missed a barrage at Quakers Hill during the fast food stop and then got vitrually nothing on Rooty Hill during the evening.

All storms were high based! This is my only daytime bolt on the day:



Regards,

Jimmy Deguara