25th October 2009Gday All,
Well the last two days have been ones of frustration to say the least. So much potential only to be ruined by a lack of nice moisture. Yesterday looked like it had the potential to be an awesome day but again moisture let us down with most convection being high based and pulsey due to weakish shear.
After watching the radar and the sky I decided to make the decision to head out for a look and I made my way to Rods house around 130pm. There was some nice convection to the south which turned out to be the Dorrigo cell which had a nice radar signature for awhile. Not long after this a cell got its going on the Richmond Range and proceeded to make its way towards the Casino area. We could make out some base features albeit a tad unorganised but we decided what the hell and went for a look.
It had a nice anvil going but after travelling around 25kms south of Casino it collapsed and we decided to head back to Rods house to wait and see what else would pop up. This would turn out to be a mistake because as soon as we got back we could see some strong convection powering up again to the south around the Nymboida area. There was some very impressive updrafts going up and it certainly was very photogenic. The timelapse I took should be very nice. It appeared to have a backshearing anvil but I think this wasn't the case as the upper winds weren't that strong and it seemed to just pulse continually in the one spot.
This is the same cell that AC, Sercy and Andy were watching from Casino.
Whilst all this was happening strong convection had popped up to the north and Rod and I had to make a decision which way to go.
We opted for the southern cell as it looked the stronger so we headed towards the Whiporie area. When we arrived we had a chaser convergence with AC and co. Again, frustratingly, the cell had lost all of its oomph and had all but died. After hanging around for about 1/2 an hour we decided that things weren't looking great so we made an executive decision to head back again and re-assess things at Rods house. Unfortunately Andy and his partner and his son had to head back home at this stage.
A quick radar check when we got back to Rods revealed that in fact some stuff had got its act together again to the south and distant lightning was visible from Rods house. It was showing some quite nice reflectivities on the radar so after much deliberation we all decided that heading towards Maclean might be the go. As per usual all the best lightning was occurring whilst in transit but eventually found a spot off the Pacific highway (old Pacific Hwy) and started snapping. There was some outstanding crawlers with a few nice CGs thrown in for good measure as well. Here are some of my favourites.
After watching this for around 45mins Stratto Cu started to fill in from the south so we decided to head a bit further south then west to try and get a vantage point for some more stuff developing to the west. The Stratto Cu deck made for difficult photography so after about 20 mins we decided to call it a night. It had been a very long day and with another 1 1/2 hrs on the road left it seemed to be the best call, even if the lightning had started to increase in intensity as we left. I ended up finally crawling into bed at 215am, 12hrs after I decided to head out
.
Considering how frustrating the day was was it was nice to finish it with some nice lightning shots and flashes accompanying us on the way home. Was great to catch up with AC, Sercy and Andy and I hope they enjoyed meeting the newest addition to the Storm Chasing community....Captain Supercell :laugh: whose true identity may be revealed at a later date. .
A special thanks goes to Rod who once again proved to me what herculean strengths of concentration he has to do all that driving. And thanks goes to Rods partner Sonya who was good enough to put up with us invading their house at 930pm.
Cheers Jason