Topic: NSW Showers and Storms Thursday 16 August 2007

[Michael Bath]

Quite a nice setup today with a good shear profile and adequate moisture through the central parts of NSW.

GFS has 20knots northerlies at 925, 30kts NW at 850, and up to 50kts NW by 500hPa. Could be some severe thunderstorms around today if adequate heating occurs.

Michael

[Jimmy Deguara]

Michael,

A classic profile for multicells merging into a line segment or squall line. That shear turning at 850hPa to the northwest stuffs things up quite a bit in this country in terms of wind profiles. Anyways, we'll see how much surface heating does occur. CAPE of 600 odd is marginal. Me thinks that heavy rain, and strong winds are the primary threats with some hail as well.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Michael Bath]

Nice to see some storms in NSW again.  Quite a bit of activity on radar and lightning tracker in the Brewarrina to Walgett areas, and also Wagga Wagga - heading for Canberra.

EDIT - STW just issued


For people in parts of the
  NORTH WEST PLAINS,
  CENTRAL WEST SLOPES,
  CENTRAL WEST PLAINS and
  EASTERN PARTS OF UPPER WESTERN Forecast Districts.

  Issued at 2:46 pm Thursday, 16 August 2007.

  Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce damaging winds and large hailstones in the warning area over the next several
  hours. Locations which may be affected include Walgett and Coonamble.

[Jimmy Deguara]

Storms are motoring along in this region - obviously in response to the jet aloft and unidirectional flow given perhaps higher bases. Yes echos look better from this radar's view point than Wagga Wagga's. Although maintaining mostly discrete activity in the southern portion of the region, they are not maintaining intensity in terms of solid cores. My guess is they could well be low topped cells.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Shaun Galman]

Hi guys,
There certainly were some monster cells to our south building all day Thursday! I watched them build (from work unfortunately) all day in very hazy/dry conditions and head rapidly East in a real "pulse storm" environment, just passing North of Walgett. There was certainly no shortage of lightning activity from 3 large high precip. cells later-on about 60k's South of us and one large active HP cell to our North around 7:30pm (not sure how distant though?)

The cells were some of the largest I have seen in a while with massive overshooting cumulus towers and forward shearing anvils from the high winds we were getting. I haven't heard any hail reports from the locals as yet but I would imagine it was surely out there! On the 40klm trip home from work I was affixed on the build line and amazed of the size of these monsters so early in the season!

Russ and I ended up trying for shots once it got dark enough but they were just too distant for my camera, though I think Russ may have something I can share with you, fingers crossed! I think he was down to 1minute exp. at ISO 1600, so yeah... they were just a little too far away for my liking lol!

Great start to the seasonal show and I cant wait to see whats in store for the spring storms!

Cheers and take care.
Shauno.

[Datazoid]

Here's a couple from August 16th:





Enjoy!

-Russ


MB Edit: thanks Russ - just moved this to the correct thread.

[Datazoid]

Ah, awesome. Thanks. :D

[Jimmy Deguara]

Datazoid,

Can you inform us of the location whre these cells occurred, what was experienced perhaps and so forth? Thanks.

By the looks, it seems they were active higher based storms.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Datazoid]

Can you inform us of the location whre these cells occurred, what was experienced perhaps and so forth? Thanks.

There were three cells, two to the south west of Lightning Ridge, one to the north, all of them over 40km away, judging from the BOM radar at the time. They were reasonably active for maybe 45 minutes after sunset, then faded away. It really wasn't worth getting the camera out for, but it's the first activity of the year, and it's good to see it so early.