Upper Western/North West N.S.W. Storm Report 17th August 2011Hi guys,
Well it was a rather interesting bit of weather last night. The afternoon started off very messy and disorganised until around 6pm EST when storms started to make an appearance through the showery rubbish. Seems like the largest and most active storm went up over Hebel (QLD border area) to our North around 6:20pm EST. Lightning was everywhere and quite frequent during that first line. The rain was also frequent and hampered my chances of getting any photos.
Fortunately I got in contact with my Mum, who was out at the Grawin opal fields 40k's West of Lightning Ridge and she let me know that more lightning was visible further out West than radar could pick up around 7pm EST. After a quick re-check of radar soon after I noticed the new, much more organised storm line was approaching FAST! I raced out into the already very muddy opal fields not far from my house and with lightning going nuts everywhere to the West I could easily make out a very large white shelf cloud racing overhead, with an ominous dark rain core coming right behind it. I knew by that time it was too late to do much and as soon as I set up the tripod and fiddled with the camera settings I knew my time was pretty much over lol. I managed half of a ten second exposure before being absolutely drenched by intense rain. The drops were huge. Several large, very close CG knocked the power out around 8pm and the microbursts were quite strong at times.
I wasn't upset by missing so many great photo ops, or having myself and my camera drenched at all. The overall show was pretty awesome to see!
Seems the totals were around 13mm in town. Most of which would have come from the second line of HP storms.
Good to be amongst it for a change. Bring on late September I say!
Kindest regards,
Shauno.
