Topic: Northwest NSW / SW QLD storms 26 Feb - 1 Mar 2007

[Michael Bath]

Been watching the Moree radar and 1km VIS and there are some rather nice looking storms over the inland parts of Northern NSW and Southern QLD this afternoon. Storms actually kicked off this morning and have continued. The cell near St George can be tracked over four hourly VIS images (the largest northern cell in the image below).



The setup is actually quite favourable for organised storms today.

Walgett was hit by a storm at 3pm with gusts close to 90km/h and another may hit the same town shortly.

Michael

[David Brodrick]

It turns out we were very well positioned for these storms in Narrabri!  There was a storm came through at about 11:00am with a bit of thunder and 1-6mm of rain. We were all impressed enough with that, given how dry things have been.

But the real action started up later in the day when up to an additional 35mm was recorded on local weather stations, with all but one of the five stations receiving about an inch or more of rain - the 36mm maximum total rain has been confirmed almost exactly with a plastic gauge as well as the tipper.

Graph showing rain at local weather stations

We went chasing after work but there was pretty much just widespead grey drizzle with poor contrast conditions. Some moderate fun on wet clay roads, but we didn't bother to take any photos in the end. Stopped at the Royal at Wee Waa for a while instead ;-)

Fortunately one of our webcams in Narrabri did all the work and captured a great sequence of the cell that delivered the inch of rain! This is the best sequence we've pulled from our webcams so far. The incoming shelf cloud appears circular and rotating, especially given it's in the opposite direction to the low level winds immediately prior to the arrival of the cell (if you are able to view the full AVI - it's a bit of an unusual CODEC..).

Animated GIF (try me first...)
AVI of full sequence

This was the same cell that delivered 48mm of rain/half hour and 98km/hr wind gusts at Coonamble if you watch the RADAR over the entire interval:

EDIT - have added permanent Moree radar loop links

Moree 128
Moree 256

Best regards,
  Dave

[Michael Bath]

Nice sequence David - I can't get those AVI to run on my PC unfortunately, but the GIF loop shows it nicely.

I heard a report of "apple sized" hail from a location just west of Nyngan. Was not able to catch the whole story but they were pleased with the very good rainfalls that fell as well.

More significant storms again this afternoon, though west of the Moree Narrabri line. Another very good severe storm setup going by GFS. Could have had a very productive two days of chasing in the Walgett Coonamble line !

MB

[David Brodrick]

Yep we saw the awesome setup out near Walgett for yesterday arvo. GFS had LI<-6.5, CAPE>2400, plenty of shear. So we went for a drive out there and it was probably the best supercell cell I've ever seen. Very clear rotation and strong inflow sucking up lots of dust. No obvious funnels but we probably got there a bit late.

Unfortunately we realised too late that the 555 timer on our time-lapse camera was dead, but still managed to get a few frames showing the rotation by manually clicking the button. We've got plenty of other photos, will go through them and post later on today.

Thunder was amazing. The storm was rumbling continuously from the moment we jumped out of the car to when the boys forced me back into it so we could make out getaway before the road got too wet.

Cheers,
  Dave

[James]

Myself and Matt chased the Warren/Quombone/Coonamble area yesterday and watched some of the nicest storms I have seen in years. I would have liked to have done the 2 day trip as you suggested above MB, however due to work commitments on Monday it ended up being a "Day trip" yesterday. I will do a proper chase report when SSC is up and running as can't post pics at the moment.

Ended up watching our first cell develop around 2pm N of Canonba. Unfortunately a cell went up in front of it blocking our views for a good 2 hours. However all was not lost as soon the cell in front became organised, moving slowly east and producing some nice wall clouds for 2 hours. As the Canonba cell was moving ENE (we could still see just the northern edge in the distance) we headed to Quambone to get a better view. The next few hours were filled with some amazing wall clouds, base structure, inflow bands and some of the most powerful lightning bolts I have ever seen (including a large number of anvil cg's that would hit 10 to 20 km ahead of the storm). The Canonba supercell had arrived into Quambone! Hope to have some pictures up soon.

David - we could see the back end of the Walgett cell for a short while. Very impressive cumiliform anvil that looked to be slightly backshearing. Not bad considering upper winds were 70 or so knots.

James

[Michael Bath]

Wow - a big day of travel there James and Matt - glad you guys were able to capture some of it.  You could at least attach one image on here as a teaser - how long is SSC going to be under construction - been a while now :-P

Can't wait to see your photos David.

Some radar loops - which highlights again the need for the new radar out there !

Moree 256

Moree 512

[David Brodrick]

Here's a couple of the photos of yesterday's Walgett cell. Sorry haven't made thumbs or offloaded the other cameras yet.

http://narrabriweather.net/events/DSC07696.JPG
http://narrabriweather.net/events/DSC07711.JPG
http://narrabriweather.net/events/DSC07723.JPG
http://narrabriweather.net/events/DSC07728.JPG
http://narrabriweather.net/events/DSC07747.JPG
http://narrabriweather.net/events/DSC07790.JPG
http://narrabriweather.net/events/DSC07791.JPG

And an animated GIF

This was near the end of the action when the outflow picked up and the rain free base didn't stay rain free anymore :-) I don't think I've ever seen such a green storm, must have been some nice hail in it.

Cheers for posting the radar. I've read there's supposed to be a doppler radar going in at Tamworth, but I've got no idea when. We collected about 10mm of rain in Narrabri last night too.

Cheers,
  Dave

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi,

That is a very nice storm - great outflow and shelf but you can see above it there seems to be relative inflow. Just remember though although the green tinge often relates to hail and could have in this case, it is not always the case. The green tinge relates to the structure of the hailstorm rather than the hail itself - hail exists in most storms though not always makes it to the surface.

It certainly was an impressive day yesterday overall.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Jeff Brislane]

That is a beautifull storm and it really looks at home out there on the north west plains.

[David Brodrick]

Yeah it has been a very good few weeks, although it's all been patchy as your rele's have observed.

Although we're doing very well again tonight. Two cells just merged right over the top of us and we've had up to an inch of rain so far, with more likely. One local weather station recorded an 84km/h gust. There were 580 lightning strikes within 56km over 15 minutes - we've had better but that's still a good one.

I tried to get some photos but it may have been too dark, I'll check shortly.


MB EDIT: Permanent links to Moree radar 28th February

Moree 128

Moree 256

[David Brodrick]

Here's some photos of tonights action over Narrabri - this is the cell on the radar which was approaching from the SW. It was very dark so the photos have been contrast enhanced, although they're still next to useless. The animated GIF is quite good though. This one appears to be rotating as well, what do you think?

We were probably very lucky not have had more severe winds although perhaps there is a good damage trail out there somewhere. I'm not sure exactly where the storm was wrt the weather station that recorded the 84km/h gust. I'll see if there's any carnage tomorrow on the drive to work.

Animated gif of tonight
http://narrabriweather.net/events/dsc06954.jpg
http://narrabriweather.net/events/dsc06963.jpg

Also I offloaded more photos of yesterday's supercell between Pilliga and Walgett from the other camera. Most of them didn't work out (poor contrast) but there's a couple of good ones!

http://narrabriweather.net/events/dsc06763.jpg
http://narrabriweather.net/events/dsc06840.jpg

Dazza took these two photos while Chris took the other ones from yesterday. They only let me supervise the time lapse camera, and I'm the nong who let it sit there for 15 minutes yesterday not taking photos! I fixed the timer circuit this evening before I went out however :-)

[Jimmy Deguara]

That last image in particular certainly provides an overall perspective of the enormity of the storm! Nice.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[David C]

Absolutely excellent HP structure there David! I have work contacts at Narrabri and Wee Waa...love the landscape up there especially when you have convection like that going off!!

Looking at this pic:
http://narrabriweather.net/events/DSC07790.JPG

.....I can see a rather wet RFD cut and a lowered base / wall cloud tucked in behind.....well i think that is what I see...... the pic is a tad dark on this monitor.

[Michael Bath]

Thanks for posting those beautiful storm photos David. It is rather frustrating not being able to chase the region!!

James Harris emailed me the following photo taken 3km north of Quambone (50ks west of Coonamble) on Tues 27th at 6.07pm.   Again, the storms just take on a magic appearance on the plains when conditions are right.

[James]

Thanks Michael for posting that photo up. SSC should be up and running in the next few weeks. Dann has been busy designing a new website which will be a big upgrade over our last one. It's just taken a little longer than we first anticipated! It should be worth the wait though. It's amazing how much time our passion for storms can take up.

That storm in the photo above had been going since around 2pm. As I mentioned in my previous post, we kept on seeing glimpses of it to our west through another storm in front. If there was a better road option out there and we were a little closer to home, I would have core punched the first cell to watch it. Never the less we finally got to it at 6pm as it approached Quambone and it sure still looked nice. Some amazing interaction between the inflow and outflow at times. The wall cloud went through stages of being well defined as the 15-20 knot North-easterly fed in, until outflow from the RFD behind the wall cloud would push it out, giving it a guster appearance. Sure enough the inflow would then push back in and the wall cloud became solid again. If only we had a low level jet!

I love chasing out here, the land and scenery just gives you that big storm feeling. Bring on the Tamworth Radar please.

David , great photos of such a great looking storm. It's great having a chaser out your way to capture some of the best storms NSW can offer.