Last night I watched the footage with Jimmy and Paul, and I have to say, the stuff available online tells only part of the story. This was a quite long-lived, at times large tornado, and had very rapid motion in the condensation funnel and the inner debris cloud. The extent to which it grew in size in a short space of time was remarkable. We'll probably see an F-rating of 1 or 2, depending on the structural aspects of the few buildings that were damaged, but there is no doubting that this was a strong tornado.
As for Sydney (26th Oct), well, the cold pool drifted virtually right over us and here we lacked sufficient mid-level winds for more sustained updrafts. I think deep inflow was there and some nice storms did organize.
I planned on an extended lunch break and with my work being minutes away from the M2, that was the obvious route to go west. Basically sat and watched radar periodically, and darted out as a weak cluster/brokem line of storms was tracking SE towards the outer NW metro area. As I pulled off Old Windsor road I could see that the base was dark, although typical in appearance of disorganized activity; competing updrafts collapsing and their outflow generating new cells, on the sthn flank in this case. Nice CGs at the time. No point going on for this garbage, so I figured I would shoot some brief video of the lightning from a vantage along Jimmy’s street, just in case he could not chase (we have a bit if a running joke re schofields and storms – little did I know what he would experience some 90 minutes later!).
What did interest me was that there appeared to be some solid convergence, a focused line of convective updraft bases. These remained rain free for some time and became substantial. There southern ½ of the metro area and beyond was free of clutter and getting some good insolation. I new things would get interesting at this point as dark menacing bases grew larger in size.
It wasn’t long before the first CGs rained down, powerful strobing bolts all around as I headed south along Windsor road to the M2.
Along the convective line, a dominant updraft, I would guess somewhere over the hills district, appeared to clear precip out on either side. I knew that I had to head back east and could only think of a 4th floor balcony at work providing the only decent N to NW view. All this time I was heading east on the M2 I could see glimpses of interesting base structure through the mirror. Would it crap out before I got a look? Fortunately not.
The next sequence of images are looking WNW from the building at the north flank of intense radar echos. (location marker on google map below, black arrow direction I am pointing camcorder).
I was pretty much leaning over the balcony to try and get this angle in, showing clearly the rain free region that persisted and the intense core to the north. If only we had better flow aloft!!
The CG lightning was frequent and strobed.
There was a good NE infeed at cloud base
I darted across the other side of the building for a view form the southward facing balcony. New bases developing, more dilution of convective energy and more lighting. As the storm moved over North Ryde, there was heavy rain and very frequent lightning and gunshot thunder.
