Referring to the Monday 27th Northern Tablelands area the sat picture belows shows the importnace of chasing boundaries. In our case a kind of dryline, but not in the mid west sense, as the air behind the dryline was still very unstable.
If you look at the picture you can see the coastal strato cumulus junk in a distinct band up the coast and penetrating inland a few miles. The trough was aligned very roughly east/west in the region of the storms. Note how the our storm (the top and right most on the picture) is seen clearly tapping the moisture, but it did form right on the boundary as east of the boundary had no convection, despite abundant moisture.
After tracking back to Glen Innes I lost Jimmy, but became interested in the lightning from the higher based stuff westwards. Outflow from our storm actually introduced some moisture, and after dark the whole area took off with lightning. The whole lot developed into a convective complex, but a small one.
On a side note to the lightning - a chaser was struck, the chaser wants to remain anomymous, it left several long red track marks radiating from the shoulder ( there is a picture and I hope that it gets posted one day ). The chaser was dazed for several minutes and has a very sore shoulder, but otherwise is OK. It was obviously not a direct strike. The same chaser 5 years ago in the very same town ( Glen Innes ), and not more than 500 yards away from Monday's bolt, had sparks fall all over their car as it passed under a telegraph pole that scored a direct hit. I was in the car behind.
Some pictures from Monday, the ones that are not video stills can be clicked for larger picture.
Just west of Ebor, storm is only 20 mins old at this stage.
Looking back to the hail area
Some of the structure west of Glen Innes around sunset
The hail that was falling near Ebor - as per Jimmy's calipers in post above.(Video Still )
CG up the road whilst I was in hail core ( video still )
Well after sunset , west of Glen Innes - now that is a base ! ( video still )
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Michael
http://ozthunder.com