Western Sydney Storms 17 December 2009
I was at Castle Hill Thursday night and managed to take the photo below from the Castle Towers car park roof looking west. I like it because it shows a small storm cell dropping a rain shower near where the fire occurred at Londonderry in Western Sydney. It suggests mother nature quenching an area scarred by fire only hours earlier.
The storm passed over Castle Hill bringing relief from the heat. Raindrops were large but the rain was not torrential. It brought some wind but no hail. Some cloud to ground lightning observed but by the time it passed over, much of the lightning was in the form of anvil crawlers.
It appears that there was a thunderstorm around the Prospect area that same day that brought damaging winds because I noted when driving around the area Friday morning and again late afternoon, a significant amount of leaf litter from trees was observed on the roads. I also observed a number of broken tree branches including some large trees that had been damaged and or brought down. I observed damaged trees on the Great Western Highway around Prospect / Girraween, near Myrtle Street Prospect and Lancelot Street Prospect.
Further to the storm at Albury / Wodonga, I have had a look at the Weather Station ID 072160 for Thursday 17 December 2009 (Latitude 36.07S and 146.95E) being the Albury Airport site and it shows wind gusts of 87 KM/H occurring at 2.43 PM from the NW, 104 KM/H gusts occurring at 2.44 PM from the NW and 107 KM/H gusts occurring for a 6 minute period from 2.46 PM to 2.52 PM from the WNW before easing to gusts of 89 KM/H at 2.56 PM and tapering away thereafter. Its highly likely the damage from winds occurred during this short period. It appears that no rain occurred as the weather station shows no rainfall from the event. It is also noted that the temperature dropped from 38.3C at 2.32 pm to 28.7C at 2.52 pm before climbing back to 33.9C at 3.30 pm.
Harley Pearman
