Topic: VIC/NSW Thunderstorms ( incl Victorian tornado discussion ) 9 - 12 February 2010

[Brad Hannon]

Ok after a very late night of sick kids and falling asleep at the PC   I have gathered all my useful photos (i dont have John's) relevant to both the Kilmore and Avenel/Longwood events.  From over 100 raw files I've processed a clean unedited .jpg as well as a contrasted .jpg image for comparison.  I will put some up now and more tonight after work.  I have many more others that add to the visual picture of what we were witnessing so they can be added later.  I dont have the time nor the mental state right now to add commentary to the images but I or John will try and add that later.  In the meantime, the images are numbered and presented in order and remember they are only of the two events mentioned above - they do not include pics of all of the other cells, wall clouds and significant funnels we chased all the way to the south of Beechworth that day.

So, starting with Kilmore where my chase officialy started at the southern end of town and by the northern outskirts we had a fully developed wall cloud and then this!:

[Brad Hannon]

One more of Kilmore, then another from a new base as we moved north.

[Brad Hannon]

You will notice that there are not mny shots between the images presented here despite the base features shown being different cells (John correct me if I'm wrong) as we went north which gives some idea of what we were experiencing that day.  Cow pics are from NW of Longwood looking south generally towards Avenel:

[Brad Hannon]

I will add a few stitched pano's of this scene as well as some wide angles

[Brad Hannon]

I will add a few stitched pano's of this scene as well as some wide angles

[Brad Hannon]

Another wide angle with contrasting:

[Brad Hannon]

This cell now started to exhibit signs of strengthening with very low base features

[Brad Hannon]

Some more wide angles at the time where we were very confident of what we were seeing in the behaviour of the base features:

[Brad Hannon]

Base features consolidating between images:

[Brad Hannon]

This storm is rocking now and there are clear base features and possible large circulation visible to the naked eye:

[Brad Hannon]

This storm is rocking now and there are clear base features and possible large circulation visible to the naked eye:

[Brad Hannon]

The storm is SW of Longwood now and part of it emerges and picks up dust from open fields that we later located during our damage survey:

[Brad Hannon]

The storm is SW of Longwood now and part of it emerges and picks up dust from open fields that we later located during our damage survey - note there is still a lot of interesting activity occuring behind (to the right of these image)where we had been watching very closely:

[Brad Hannon]

at this stage RFD is aproaching us from the west (from the right in the images) and we have to move plus we need to move quick to ensure we beat the circulation to Longwood and our NE option on or alongside the Hume. The main circulation and base-feature activity we had been watching is now being rain wrapped as RFD moves through and crosses the Hume but there is still some substantial dark base features in the pics.  These large funnels reach out a long ay in front of the storm and even keep up with us for a while.

[Brad Hannon]

We eventually gain some space which allows us to pull over and view the storm which is now a large tall precip wall and a few interesting features!  There is more to come but I have to go to work in Geelong, as long as I dont fall asleep that is!