Topic: Severe Storms NSW April 8 2010

[Jimmy Deguara]

Not sure how many saw it but a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for a storm that developed west of Nowra and tracked the boundary towards Wollongong. This storm was reasonably impressive for about 20 minutes before crossing the boundary/windshift and became undercut. Visually, the storm was not that spectacular with a slight whispy appearance in the anvil. Such storms are not uncommon tracking boundaries forming along the escarpment.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[pingtang]

Hey Jimmy. I was on that storm between Nowra and Berry.



This was taken a few minutes after 4:00pm , 5kms north of Nowra looking west.  There is a rain free base, nothing special or anything,but some cgs were hitting in that area occasionally. At this stage a few cgs actually hit 500metres behind my back with great thunder.This had me thinking the storm was trying to become organised,as there were no cgs 10minutes earlier, just frequent anvil crawlers. Some cgs actually looked quite strong.The heavy rain hit,so I packed up and headed northeast towards Berry. I struggled to get ahead the rain, in fact the storm was becoming embedded and scud was flying in from the southeast obscuring any structure. It was still raining lightly in Berry,when I encountered a nice flang whilst driving. I was staring straight into it,( it hit just behind a tree in a paddock)  but unfortunately didnt capture it on video.  At first I thought it was 50metres away, but im now thinking 100metres .  Close lightning is often slightly further away than your first thoughts,I notice this all the time on my videos.  Great thunder from it though,instant loud boom!  I continued to Kiama, catching up to the main precip core again ,it looked very unspectacular and the AM was becoming infrequent. I gave up ,and that was it.

See : 128km Radar Loop for Canberra, 23:00 07/04/2010 to 08:00 08/04/2010 UTC


Heres the Canberra radar. Maybe a slight left move at 4pm? The storm decays rapidly as you mentioned.  

PS- My brother said his workmates reported hail 10kms SW of Nowra.

[Richary]

The Sydney radar looked very interesting about 6:30pm with a very localised rain area heading north up the coast. Stormtracker loop showed that it stopped throwing out lightning before it got to Sydney, and we only got some light rain. At the same time there was lots of outflow scud visible moving quite fast, and the wind radar loop also looked very unusual between about 6-6:30 with the small area of wind suddenly expanding to cover the whole radar. Not sure if that was related to the storm or something else as the storm was still well south of Terrey Hills at that stage.

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi guys,

Pintang, great you covered the storm's base - do you have earlier pictures of the storm including the updraft? Personally, I didn't even bother to chase it as I was busy. Not even a photograph of it from here!

Richary, I heard thunder here once as the remnants of the storm followed the gusty outflow. We got a few sprinkles with road hardly getting wet. A half kilometre to our east and further beyond this, the road was wet!

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[pingtang]

Hey Jimmy.I never caught sight of the updraft, nor do I have any photos. I left home abit too late,and it actually starting to rain as I left home. I had a suspicion the storm could intensify, so I wanted to get far enough ahead of it, with a good road option to the northeast. My original plan was to view the storm from mt cambewarra which is 600metres ASL and looks over Nowra.  I've always wanted to witness a storm from that height,and to look down at the CGs!!