Author Topic: Darwin Storm events 2007/2008 (Read 108770 times)

Mike · « **Reply #60 on:** 21 November 2007, 09:02:49 PM »

Tuesday November 20

Worked tonight but there was an active group of storms to the SE of Darwin across the harbour - not being one to miss an photo op I dashed out at tea time (an hour later from initially spotting the CGs) and set up at the wharf area for a spell. There were two storms with lots of CC stuff but flanged a few long bolts from the dome to earth - captured a few and due to the distance they looked quite nice with the orange tinge. Frankly, it was close enough to get shots so why waste the evening because i'm working! One in particular was quite nice, top to bottom and double CG at the base. Thankfully I'm not working till Saturday night so it will give me a chance to get some juicy stuff again one hopes.

Just some details of the conditions..CAPE has been around high 3k and LI's of -5, the storms that came to darwin did not last too long, but i have noticed at night there's a lot to the se/e. Temps have been around 32.5 and DPs of 22-24.3 most of the day. The storms at late evening seem to be very lightning active for at least 2 hours or so. Not being able to view radar or anything whilst at work they converge in the same area all the time each night. There's flashes i can see even now with storms to the east (at 1:39am!) so it gives me some confidence of chasing in the wee hours of the morning if they are coming with in driving distance not too far from home.

The storms of the past week were due to TC Guba's flow of storms to us with the tail of the trough line, but with 700hp winds of 25kts this seems to have an affect on storms reaching the city. 850hp winds are favoured up here and so long as there is good steering strength it amounts to the storms pushing through....

Here's some of them....

Onya Adrian - ask anything you like we're all here to assist you.

Mike

Mike · « **Reply #61 on:** 23 November 2007, 02:14:41 PM »

November 22 2007

Replotted sounding and LI's at an incredible -6.9 - CAPE at 3500+, although not relying solely on the numbers the storms propogating to the SE are huge and there's a line forming in from the SE toward Darwin.

Camera is primed and so am I! Hopefully film at 11!

Jimmy Deguara · « **Reply #62 on:** 23 November 2007, 03:21:37 PM »

Mike,

They certainly look intense based on the radar image supplied. An organised line by the looks. With that sort of CAPE, I would say there could be some strong lightning bolt activity.

Enjoy.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

Adrian · « **Reply #63 on:** 23 November 2007, 06:09:26 PM »

22 Nov 2007

This storm front started to become active about 15 mins before last light and lasted to about 21:30 ... absolutely fantastic

The lighting was pretty much perfect for capturing some CG's. Will leave others to critique the weather patterns but thought that I would post some pics.... enjoy.

Mike · « **Reply #64 on:** 24 November 2007, 04:57:30 AM »

Hi all.

Can only voice Adrian's comments and in fact my photos which i'll post later on are the same, just from a different location!! Was a nice treat for a change and from what the satpics and radar showed just before tea time there were several storms organised around the traps.

Just a tip Adrian re your photo files - any chance that you could compress the files as their sizes take up a lot of usage to load up on the forum. I'm guilty as hell for doing it in the past, but if you go online you'll find free JPEG compression stuff which compresses your photos without degrading the image. They load faster, they look great as you can have it thumbnail size but when anyone looks at them they are full size. 800 x 600 size is ideal for most people to view. You'll find that your file size can be reduced by more than half - for example some of your shots are 140kb say, when compressed they'll be in the range of 40kb without any degrading.

If you compress them it's far more user friendly for you and the forum's server to handle! If you don't know how to do it that's fine, most of the links i've fou8nd when i typed in 'JPEG compression' online has all the instructions - it's easy and takes a couple of mins. You'll find the uploading of files is super quick !

Mike

Adrian · « **Reply #65 on:** 24 November 2007, 08:22:18 AM »

Hi Mike,

No problems with compressing them, I actually shoot in RAW so the initial file is about 8-9Mb and then I compress it to JPG.

But it is on high quality so will be able to drop that down, to make the files approx 40K.

Look forward to your photos as it was a great night to be out.

Cheers,
Adrian

Mike · « **Reply #66 on:** 24 November 2007, 09:38:34 AM »

Absolutely! I have the images at work but they're not compressed - actually they are small files and won't do them justice by posting them now, so i'll wait till later on when i get home. Could not believe the amount of multiple CGs in that one area. Have one shot with 4-5 full CGs in one spot and all in the same capture. There was a lot of activity down behind me also (10-20km or so) but where i was all of the activity was to the southwestern areas.

The cloud structures were quite ominous when the lightning flashed through them to expose just how low the bases were. I saw a massive inflow wedge under one of the storms but the lightning was all above and just sheet lightning. Dew points were in the 24's and temp still around 31 and I did not head out until around 7ish.

Jimmy, yes the storms definitely got organised early in the evening. Once I saw that storm that Adrian took a photo of at sunset (above) and noticed the crisp anvil structure I actually took a photo of it also from my driveway and knew that this thing was going to be a great provider of lightning. There was enough nice clean, clear blue sky between these cells so there was no moisture laden cool air to decrease their strength. The wind picked up just before i headed out and about an hour and a half into taking photographs it was fairly strong coming from the outflow once the lightning was decreasing and the rain started to approach.

It was a great night out and I was actually exhausted after all the excitement - mentally drained I guess you could say!

Photos will be posted this arvo.....a couple of shots are a tad askew as my tripod legs were standing in beach sand and i was holding it still due to the wind, albeit i got the strikes which was more important!

Mike · « **Reply #67 on:** 24 November 2007, 12:50:55 PM »

Here's some of my pics from last night. Same photos as Adrian but from a different area. Forgive some of the slightly out of focus ones, as I mentioned the legs of the tripod were in the sand and i think by me moving the legs inadvertently bumped the lens as it was in manual focus DOH!

There were a variety of pulsing monsters - the one at the 45degree angle pulsed at least 5 times - just awesome. My favorite is the one with the crawler - completely lit the darkness up around me.

Adrian, I've found that the East Arm boat ramp is a pearler for photos with a 180 degree view of anything on that side - generally where the big storms head if they don't come to town. Take the insect spray and I'll see you there one night!

Mike

orage · « **Reply #68 on:** 24 November 2007, 02:05:24 PM »

I absolutely love these photos. They have wonderful colours. I especially Mike's photos from the 20th of November. Will look forward to seeing some more fantastic photos on this forum!

Mike · « **Reply #69 on:** 26 November 2007, 10:50:44 AM »

Only a couple of storms about today. Sounding fairly good but mushy in the middle zones. There's an angry storm passing at the moment which I got some shots of, only a few rumbles to be heard and strong showers with it. One nice CB over to the west with mamma under the forming anvil. Always a good sign and it was in the same area as those CG shots the other night. There's some hope of something tonight, but not too much faith just yet!

A couple of images to cure my appetite again...and I've added a map of Darwin to show those who have not visited where I generally chase. There's not a lot of real large driving to do thankfully and most of my best photographs have come from the area just NW of my place. Unless the storms are long the coast or moving in that way, I'll generally get ahead of them to set up. I'd say 75% of the time I'm either NW, S or SE of my place.

Just thought you'd like to see where I go...

Mike

Mike · « **Reply #70 on:** 27 November 2007, 02:04:06 PM »

26 November 2007

Pretty dull here in the tropics at the moment!

Inland storm(s) is the norm, fairly large but within 80km of the seabreeze winds it's just a nonesense! One large cell within a decent view about 30-40odd km away to the SW. A lack of steering winds, decent shear and that seabreeze murdered it to vapour.

Observed for over about 45 minutes with this storm and it had excellent potential - big tower, huge amount of convective CUs to the rear bubbling away. Anvil was average though and whilst I could see the updraft trying, it had no push once it got to a certain height and range of me.

CAPE etc was very good, but lapse rates i think just weren't going to be assisted by that on its own. Drier air right throughout the sounding with a nasty inversion at 900ish. Watching the storm come around the western side of the harbour the anvil just pettered out, the CUs following it just spread out like pancakes and the leading group of feeding CUs to the front just separated once they hit cooler air. Terribly frustrating even when observing!

Sometimes I wish we'd get some nice dryline storms again like we had a few weeks back. Last week apparently BoM said we were heading for a very strong line of storms but ironically it was moving that fast that it brought hot easterly winds with it and they burnt themselves out!

I had to be a forecaster up here - they get hammered by 'some' other chasers up here for not apparently being 'accurate' - easy for some to critique.....!

Mike

Jimmy Deguara · « **Reply #71 on:** 27 November 2007, 02:35:29 PM »

Boy has it been very active with varying structures over the past weeks! Thanks for showing us these - at least we get a chance to see what is going on and being covered well in that part of the world.

Your comment about 'dryline storms' - are you definitely sure about this? Dryline storms are often associated with the dynamics of sharp gradients in moisture particularly in Tornado Alley and places like Bangladesh/eastern India although some situations occur in Australia as well.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

Mike · « **Reply #72 on:** 27 November 2007, 03:53:35 PM »

Hi Jimmy. In reference to dryline storms - sorry about that - was thinking about something I read in the paper here last week when they came through and I'm sure it mentioned the words 'dry line' in the story about our weather - look, it may have been something else in reference to it and we'll just forget about that bit in my last post, it was something that was sticking in my mind when posting

Would be nice though!

Decided to head off to where the big storms are this week. Using my travel voucher to spend three days up at the Coburg Peninsular at Peppers Free Spirit resort about 75km to the NE . The fantastic thing is that Hector is only a stone's throw from there and I can guarantee some deep convective storm shots and the percentages for decent nighttime lightning is enhanced due to plenty of storms actually forming in that part of the NT that don't make it to Darwin.

Pretty enthused as you might expect - it's a fabulous part of the NT and hexy to stay there ($2000 for three nights!) but won't cost me a cent except for the coldies.....hoping to get there from Wednesday to Friday this week. I don't have a laptop so I'll see if I can use one of their computers for access to met stuff or those observation techniques will come to the test if I can't!

Mike

Macca · « **Reply #73 on:** 28 November 2007, 05:01:12 AM »

Hi all,

Just a quick post. Holidaying in Darwin for a week or so. Arrived Saturday night. Saw a nice Cb on sunrise Sunday morning and then as we were heading out to the markets spotted a funnel under a TCu sitting off the coast. Tried to get to Nightcliff and saw a fully developed waterspout on the way. By the time we got there, the TCu had unloaded and precip either had hidden or destroyed the spout. (We didn't have our cameras with us anyway but still nice to see).

Played around at Berry Springs for a while before heading up to Howard Springs to check out the cells coming in from the east. Few nice gusts from these cells (which weren't very thundery). They put out an outflow boundary which then kicked off more storms just west of Channel Island. We watched these for a bit but they weren't doing much. Just as we were about to leave, once cell pushed out a burst of CG's which lasted about 10-15 mins. Some nice deep booms of thunder .

Few photos from Sunday here...

http://macca.bsch.au.com/gallery2/v/Chase-Season-07-08/251107/

Yesterday, we went down to Litchfield for a few swims in different places. Got onto a storm down there which was pretty nice - it played in some very scenic locations.

http://macca.bsch.au.com/gallery2/v/Chase-Season-07-08/261107/

Macca

Mike · « **Reply #74 on:** 28 November 2007, 05:20:59 AM »

Hi Macca, you've certainly been seeing the sights crammed into a few days! A lot of storms form in those areas 'down the track' during the day, some particularly large of late. Some very picturesque photos I must say.

Mike

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