Topic: Melbourne storms - 20 April 2010

[Brad Hannon]

Got some really nice lightning-illuminated structure shots on Tuesday night from dusk to 1am from local northern and eastern suburbs storms which were very lightning active and very slow moving. There were reports of flash flooding and high numbers of SES calls in the SE suburbs.

Here is one of my fav's....

[Michael Bath]

Hi Brad - the lightning is well placed on that shot - nice.

Any ideas on why so much of the more intense storm activity on the day formed and persisted over the Bay? Seems a trough line or boundary was anchored for hours across the area, leading to some big rainfall totals (approaching 100mm) across parts of the Mornington Peninsula.

128km Radar Loop for Melbourne, 00:00 20/04/2010 to 14:00 20/04/2010 UTC

[Brad Hannon]

Thanks Michael.  The lightning was quite active and the storms quite slow moving so I had a nice structure show from my vantage.  Not sure what the mechanism was for the backbuilding over the bay and unfortunately I was unable to chase or check obs at the time due to work.  Perhaps John may have something in answer to this question?