Topic: NSW/SE QLD Storms 10-11 Sep 2007: First severe storms of spring?

[David C]

Upper trough coming through, low level moisture looks set.

Discuss.

[Michael Bath]

GFS is playing around with the timing a fair bit and the BoM seem to think it will be westerly change based on their current Northeast NSW district forecasts. The latest GFS run suggests the trough will arrive too early for the Northern Rivers on Tuesday. Should be some action Monday 10th inland too.

[Jimmy Deguara]

From when I looked at the models, the whole event has been downgraded in being mainly off the coast. Monday is extremely marginal in perhaps producing a few thunderstorms.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Shaun Galman]

Hi guys,
Fingers crossed, we see something decent emerge from this system, even a small active squall line would be nice to see! Are there any clear indications as to what the trough might do in the way of storms as yet?

From the past few years records of chases we should be poised for the start of the storm season very soon!

My camera is dusted off and the batteries are charged so I'll be ready if anything wants to make itself known out our way!

Cheers guys and take care!
Shauno 

[Michael Bath]

Have briefly checked the Sunday 00z runs of GFS and LAPS/MESOLAPS are they vary quite a bit in where activity is forecast for Monday/Tuesday. GFS is certainly less favourable for my area on Tuesday with the trough and moisture shooting out to sea by early arvo.  If anything forms, it's certainly going to be moving along fairly rapidly.

[Jimmy Deguara]

Shaun is on the money here with storms congealing into a squall line based on current analysis of the models. Time will tell I guess.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Steven]

Yeah, I thought that too, I mean it's rather suspicious the models would be predicting all this "rain" I concluded that there should be high precipitation in the storms, ie some sort of squall line or a line of them, however with moisture being closer to the coast, means the darling downs and granite belt might miss out, however Anthony said on WZ that Sunshine Coast and north of there would be a "safer bet" whatever that means?

[Shaun Galman]

Hi guys,
Not looking too good out this way (as yet), some nice photogenic virga thats been absolutely everywhere as of lunchtime! A few squally cells here and there and we do have one large cell to our North possibly around the Angledool / Hebel area but no sign of activity at the moment?

We'll keep an eye out as the afternoon progresses and be poised for anything that may come along though it is moving quite rapidly as Michael suggested!

Cheers guys and take care.
Shauno

[David Brodrick]

Hi Shauno,
Probably the same line of virga made it to Narrabri. No rain was recorded, but RADAR showed a fast-moving line >100km long which eventually broke up as it reached the mountains to our East.

On a different day it could have made a great squall line but the dew points were down around 0-5 degrees and so the cold front was lifting dry air and the cloud base was very high. As Shauno says the virga was prominent. There was even some curious mammatus looking cloud in the line which a few people remarked upon but I didn't have a camera to photograph.

Some more showers coming through now and there's still some lightning far out west.
Regards,
  Dave

[David Brodrick]

Didn't get any photos, but the webcam images of the virga are kind of cute. Sorry these animated gifs are several MB each.. nobody seems to be able to view any mpg's that I build..

Narrabri Webcam West View

Narrabri Webcam Northeast View


MB edit: - added permanent links.

[Steven]

Had a look at the Moree radar, at around lunch time, to me those cells didn't look severe, but then Moree does underestimate echos, but it is a shame that it was only virga, you guys could have done with some rain, tomorrow however is a different story as the cold front (or storm front) comes closer, and to be really honest it looks promising.

[Jimmy Deguara]

Steven,

It is looking much less promising from now on. The main axis of the trough seems to be off the coast by maximum heating. To me you will see some large thunderstorms and lots of lightning activity 100 km or more off the coast. If anything happens near Brisbane or noth, it should move offshore very quickly. There was only one scenario that looked good on one model but none since in my opinion.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Steven]

Well I doubt it will be a fizzer although if these storms do clear the coast quickly, it better be nighttime, or else capturing lightning won't work, despite your opinion, I still have high hopes. Although judging by the charts, anywhere south of Coolangatta to north of about Gympie should see some action perhaps. Bureau is pretty adamant as they say 'late storm' in the forecast, which to me sounds pretty okay.

[Shaun Galman]

Hi guys,
Well we had no real luck with the storms here last night as you all know by now. The lightning tracker looked promising at around 6:00pm with a small line of cells between us (Lightning Ridge) and Brewarrina that were headed our way quite fast, but they soon split-up and dissapated rapidly with a cold North Easterly infeed. We did see a few distant flashes to our South but nothing decent unfortunately? I think we had a total of 0.2mm of rain from a couple of heavy cloud bursts at 9:30pm-ish (not quite enough to settle the dust though).

There was even some curious mammatus looking cloud in the line which a few people remarked upon but I didn't have a camera to photograph.

Hi David,
We did notice the mammatus which was really impressive just before the virga seemed to collapse out of it, putting on a fairly good show across the afternoon from each of the passing upper-level cumulus masses. Russ has a few shots of it so I'll persuede him to post them here asap.

No too sure about today as yet? It's not looking favourable at the moment, no humidity and the temps are just a little too low? Now, If we received a forecast in the 30+ degree range we would've all been set with this system

Lets hope it warms somewhat before the next trough approaches!
Cheers and take care.
Shauno
   

[Michael Bath]

Right on the coast Forster to Port Macquarie has fired in the past 30 minutes. Rather dry looking here atm as expected. dew point of 9 and gusty N-NW winds.

Image at 12.40pm