Yesterday's chase can now be dubbed "Trapped at Jackadgery" !! Headed off with Rodney, and Beck (in a separate car) down to Grafton area. Early cells on the Dorrigo Plateau looked quite promising with some nice updrafts observed at a distance. But it pretty well collapsed by the time we got close. Beck decided to head back to Lismore at this point.
Rodney and I headed out to Jackadgery where a weak cell had formed (this morning I see on radar it was a cell split). It gave off a few rumbles and quite a decent shower before completely dissipating.
The main show soon started to come into view. Very high tops could be seen to the S and SW above low cloud and developing base features. We were treated to a spectacular show as this severe storm seemed to "fall" down the escarpment into the Mann River Valley to our south. Ragged base features, green tinge and regular lightning indicated this was a strong thunderstorm. The timelapse sequence of this will be spectacular. We took off west about 2ks as the storm struck a couple of ks east of Jackadgery. A couple of close CGs hit nearby too.
Winds were quite strong at our location (maybe 70km/h) but little did we know how wild the storm was just to the east.
Moving back to assess the damage (and with the aim to keep tracking this storm NE) we soon found the Gwydir Highway littered with branches. A nearby creek was a raging torrent from the torrential downpour. More branches over the road, then.... no go. Two very large trees were right across the road, a semitrailer on the other side and one two other vehicles on the western side. There was no way anyone was going to get around this.
Instead of waiting, we eventually decided to try a gravel road to the north which connects back to the highway further east. What an adventure this turned out to be, a few ks in and full on smashed up trees, constant debris over the road. We kept trying, dragging trees off the road in the hope of getting through then after about 10ks, another massive tree completely blocked this route. It was now almost dark, we headed back the way we came. I think we only covered 15km in a whole hour due to the extensive debris field slowing the drive.
We stopped at the Jackadgery shop, then back east and waited on the highway with the other drivers (only about 20). It was now 9pm and the chainsaw operator was nearly finished, then finally through at 915pm - about 2.5 hours after the storm hit !
We missed the earlier lightning show because of the drama, but then had a 3 hour lightning show from Woodburn, Lismore and McLeans Ridges, finishing up at 2am.
Michael
