Topic: 3 hours of stationary updraft and funnels in Melbourne 13 August 2010

[Brad Hannon]

Hi all, I have been observing a rather interesting event this afternoon from my office in the city.  I will do my best to describe it. I will put up pics tonight but it's fair to say there was a persistent (over 3 hours - yes thats right!!!) updraft feature rooted in place in mid level cloud on a boundary of sorts over the western suburbs.  It barely moved as it cycled continuously every few minutes with funnels many times, some significant and large.  Surprisingly, in the absence of storms there was some evidence of corkscrew rotation in the updraft and at one stage when it really ramped up there was a clear slot wrapping cyclonically around the updraft area.  It was like watching a rotating wallcloud, but it was dropping out of mid level cloud complete with funnels.  I thought we may get a landspout tornado but I did not see one.

Here are two pics, the rest tonight.

[Brad Hannon]

Does anyone think this is possibly a seabreaze boundary phenomenon and if so, how common would it be that the features in my pics below could persist for 3 hours! (12pm-3pm) essentially stationary while the cloud deck was slowly moving?

Here are two gifs with a total of 92 photos taken between 12.20pm and 2.06pm, the first GIF has the first 48 images I shot with my crappy phone cam and the 2nd GIF has the remaining photos shot with a Lumix point and shoot I borrowed.

[Hardy25]

i really dont know what to say about those pics.

i can say tho, following your posts along time before i joined, im jealous of how eagle eyed you are

but yeah cant have been a good situation if indeed it was a funnel cloud and it got more organised in a built up city area like that

on the first gif near the end, it looks like a significant lowering. of what im undecided

[Michael Bath]

Was all the cloud below the inversion shown on the Melbourne sounding?  It does show winds turning with height though fairly light. Hard to say whether that is playing a role.

[Brad Hannon]

Thanks for the compliment Hardy! I do pride myself on being very alert with my observations and with Melbourne and Vic's weather fortunes having turned for the better in the last 18mths or so (ie more moisture) I am firmly of the belief that there is more interesting meteorological phenomenon occuring in the skies down here than most are aware of.  Whatever the mechanisms may be, if something out of the ordinary is occuring in the sky I want to see it! and i'll share it as best I can with others.

Thanks for the sounding Michael.  The inversion was certainly very evident in the skies with a thick deck of cloud that I would describe as mid level (could be wrong on that estimate).  Apart from scud developing near and directly under the updraft (which was very quickly pulled upward), there wasnt any other cloud visible to me below the inversion. The only area that was unique from my view (close to 180 degrees - north thru west to south) was the area of updraft and lowerings shown in the pics, so something was clearly occuring right at that point for a prolonged period of time.

Some other Melbournites have attributed the sea breaze off the bay as creating a boundary and I certainly can understand that theory. Just surprised that it could persist for so long and produce at times some decent rotation and quite decent funnels on such a stationary boundary.

[Hardy25]

Some other Melbournites have attributed the sea breaze off the bay as creating a boundary and I certainly can understand that theory. Just surprised that it could persist for so long and produce at times some decent rotation and quite decent funnels on such a stationary boundary.

as i live on the bay and follow alot of the weather on and around it, i have seen and have been showed things that lend to this theory but until someone with hard data and correlates it with harder facts it remains a theory