Topic: NSW showers/storms: 18-19 August 2008

[enak_12]

The light shows keep coming this winter. Last night I went out to my usual spot again about 25mins there and back only to realize when I took the camera out to shoot some awesome lightning that I left my battery on the charger AH! So I raced home and back again but by then the storms were further away and weakening. I still got a couple of shots though. The full moon gave it an unsual brightness on the clouds.

[Richary]

The change came through Sydney around 7, but all the lightning was long way east of me, probably off the coast. Temp dropped a bit and we had about 10 minutes of light showers with large raindrops. No hail or anything though. Just been cold mornings here, had -1 at Rydalmere this morning at 6:30am with the thermometer about 1m off the ground so a nice frost, though it has yet to get cold enough to ice up the car windows.

[Mike]

Some beaut thunderheads there in those pics.  Always pays to keep a spare battery eh?!

[Harley Pearman]

Twice this week being the 18 and 22 August, I have seen distant thunderstorms either off the coast or parallel to the coastline off Sydney.

The change on Monday night 18/8/08 brought no rain to where I live. It brought a wind change only but I was observing the occasional lightning flash to the east from a storm that clipped Sydney's east.

However early morning of 22/8/08 I was observing another distant storm cell off the coast of Sydney. I used the Boltek lightning tracker to have a look at it and noted that it was at least 30 km off the coast and by 6.25 am that storm cell plus two others over NE New South Wales had generated some 986 lightning flashes.
 
I looked again at 1 pm and noted that storm cells just off Sydney plus others off the New South Wales mid north coast had generated some 2,350 lightning flashes.

Despite the rain / showers and cold today 22/8/08, extensive thunderstorm activity prevailed off the New South Wales coastline for a large portion of the day.

Harley Pearman

[Richary]

I am wondernig if the thunderstorms on the 19th actually came across the coast in Sydney on the 19th (specifically Rose Bay). Had to go and check out a wireless link there that seems to have problems with both the power supply and the radio unit - though given the rain today wasn't going to set the ladder up to do the swap! That can wait until Monday.