Topic: Broken Hill dust storm

[Michael Bath]

Quite an amazing clip of a massive dust storm taken on 21 Dec 2007. The dust illustrates well the wind field under a shelf cloud.

Broken Hill Dust Storm Australia

[Kristy Norman]

Thats's pretty freaky but very cool! I just watched their extended clip of this on Youtube, everything has this eerie blood red glow after the darkness. Amazing!

[nmoir]

i have had this vid sent to me a number of times each time claiming to be somewhere else. still awesome stuff and has got me thinking about chasing far west storms.

[Jimmy Deguara]

That is awesome and I think Nick - you told me about this in a phone call a couple of months ago. I don't think chasing the west storms is sufficient - you would require:

- drought conditions or at least extended periods of dry ( for suspended dust)
- atmospheric conditions indicating sharp changes in wind direction ( you can see a right to left motion along the shelf cloud)
- low bases would help too otherwise I find high bases tend to interrupt the development of a solid outflow boundary and have several fronts ahead of the actual shelf cloud front.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Shaun Galman]

Wow! What an amazing storm front!

I chuckled when she said "It looks like a little Ayres Rock". I'm sure that would be slightly larger in size than the Rock but seems like a similar colour! We had a similar event here at Lightning Ridge in 1974 (which seemed to be year for awesome weather events- flooding in particular)

I have seen a photo of the one that hit here back then but there's no sign of a carrier storm as the photo was taken looking down from one of the ridges but my dad, after watching this vid, says it wasn't as dark inside as that one which I suspected. It was raining mud here pretty heavy however.

Very impressive video. I would've loved to have been out there photographing it. What a monster shelf cloud! I love those right to left motions and the3 structural shapes at the base of the dust, very cool!

Regards,
Shauno

[nmoir]

i reckon you are dead on with that last one with the consistant solid outflow boundary , i have seen short dust storms and swirls from shorter gust fronts and microbursts , but i was thinking more of the region around mildura , as the land is routinly ploughed or deviod of grass covering and have seen some good broad dust storms when it is not a big billowing front but a slow intesification of raised dust until my vision was about 20m infront of me (lo res example pic attached) and at stages was just infront of my headlights.

[Peter J]

Reminds me of the 1983 Dust storm that swept across Melbourne VIC - except this one is taller and followed a storm-type gust front. And was clearer in dust colour.
It's not something I would want to drive 100kph directly into like these people did!

Big Pete
(reminicing the fish chips and red dust for tea - Feb 16, 1983)