We've just returned from a fun weekends chasing.
Chase report- Michalago, cooma Saturday 31st October We left Nowra at approximately 10:30am under partly cloudy skies. As we ventured up onto the Southern Highlands skies were clearer and temperatures were noticably warmer. As we took the Hume Hwy down to Goulburn we noticed the first signs of convection well to the distant Southwest probrably near the Snowy Mountains. We continued south to the town of Collector where I showed Lightning chaser an awesome view I found the previous day. At this stage it was 1:30pm, the convection was slowly buliding to the southwest. We decided to head south of Canberra as the skies looked terrible to the north of the ACT. Just south of Tuggeranong, the convection was becoming much healthier with some lovely updrafts to the southeast developing into a photogenic pulse storm. We pushed further south to the town of Michalago and watched this storm to our east. It had thunder every 10seconds or so,and even threw out the occasional clear air CG! Meanwhile a line of thunderstorms to our west got their act together with CGs becoming visable. We abandoned the eastern storm, and found a nearby hill which had a respectable view to the west. Unfortunately this lot of storms weakened however fresh bases developed just to our south.These bases rapidly became quite ominous and unleashed some very heavy precipitation cores! (see below)
These bases were the Michalago storms which were picking up plenty of reds and even abit of black on radar. It became rapidly outflow dominant though, with the storm turning into large precip curtians though there was nice CGs at times.
With things looking rather dire in the Michalago area we decided to push south towards Cooma. While driving through Bredbo we caught glimpses of the strong Cooma pulse storm, with a very defined rain/hail curtain evident and even a guster. When we reached Cooma, the storm was still active with continous thunder however it was outflow dominated. As we got into the actual town outskirts of Cooma,we came across some fairly serious flash flooding. (see below)
This water was flowing with large logs drifting past every now and then. The next day, there was no water in this area at all!!!
There was also plenty of hail,with some nice drifts evident on the sides of the road. One particular hill had turned white like snow. Some of these drifts were still evident at 9am this morning!!
Chase report- Bungendore area 1st November 2009 We left Cooma after mid morning and orginally targeted the Michalago area. We found a neat little spot approx 5kms east of Michalago which had phone reception, shade,and best of all a nice view to the Southwest and West. We parked here for a good few hours or so keeping an eye on things. To kill some time we even set up a small putt putt course and played 18holes [Big Grin] During the afternoon we were becoming rather worried about the sky to our west. Cu and Cj was struggling big time and it didnt look like a cell could form anywhere west of the ranges. Meanwhile the convection to our east was MUCH healthier with a storm devloping 30kms to our SE in NO MANS LAND!. We then made the call to head north to Canberra where an east road option to Braidwood was available. On the way to Canberra we saw some very powerful convection. Some of the updrafts were explosive and easily the best i've seen since my QLD trip last year!
After what seemed ages we finally reached the town of Bungandore. From here two storms were evident about 30kms to the SSW. The northwestern storm was throwing out the occasional CA CG with nice distant booms following almost a minute afterwards. We found a great view just 20kms from Braidwood driving past two brown snakes on the way. The northeastern storm threw out numerous CGs(though distant), however it was gradually weakening. Meanwhile the northwestern storm was getting its act together with some nice rain free bases becoming apparant. We witnessed some nice pulsing CGs from these and heavy rain/hail shafts with some nice rain foots/ possible microbursts. (see below)
The main RFB slid to our north so we drifted northwestwards again to Bungandore in the hope of keeping ahead of it. We drove through a brief microcburst just before bungandore and also encountered heavy rain and minor flash flooding though I dont think we drove through the main core. We finally had a road option to the north, but we struggled to keep ahead of the anvil rain. The storm dished out one more lot of very nice CGs before weakening altogher. We then met up with Michael Thompson and Feral wx before calling it a day.
