Topic: NSW & S QLD Storms: 2-6 October 2008

[Shaun Galman]

Hi all,
Nice lightning shots there Ben!

We had a rather nice storm sitting to our SW last night. We had a moist NE wind inflow that kept the storm sustained and highly active for just over 3hrs! I noticed a lot of bright flashing while out walking at 8pm and it continued until I walked home again at 10:30pm. Seemed to be very active with a good large strike (lighting the whole sky) every 3seconds or so with smaller flashes in between. Once I reached the top of the hill just up the street from home I could see towering structure being nicely illuminated orange-ish due to the distance of the storm, which I would estimate at 100k's or so. Temps were still 25ºc at 10:35pm! At a guess I would have positioned the storm somewhere out between Cumborah (to our West) and Walgett. I saw the last flashes at 11:15pm just before I hit the hay.

I have to correct myself here:
This storm was a little further West and more distant than I had guessed. It was creating a little havoc at Brewarrina and dumped 4-5mm from a few different sources I've looked at. That distance really surprises me as I could almost see the cloud structure clearly enough to get a photograph or two (maybe I should have in hindsight?) from here which is 150k's away as the crow flies.

Hopefully something may pass close by or over our area today? Currently: Temp.- 32.7ºc and a light to moderate N-NW wind. The DP was 15.1 at 9am (though I would imagine that would have come down a little by now) Humidity is at 46%, and boy does it feel it!

Cheers guys,
Shauno

   

[Richary]

Some nice pictures. By the time the Bureau issued the severe storm alert for Sydney it was obvious the storms were going to followr the fairly common track from Glenorie-Hornsby-Northern Beaches route and stay a fair way north of my location. I did see a few nice strikes from home but they were a fair way off.

Can't see anything building up for later today like promised, it just hasn't warmed up enough and constant showers are taking the heat out of any potential buildup.

I do need to find somewhere else to rent, maybe I should look at the common storm tracks through Sydney and base my location on that!

[James]

Watched the storms develop over the Old Northern rroad to my north from Galston last night. Lots of interesting mid level crawlers but not many CG's.

No reports of damage from the Sydney area that have heard/read. The BOM mentioned in their cancelled STW last night that two places had received winds above 90km/h .. I think one was West Wyalong but cant remember the other location. Was somewhere inland

Looking forward to the 00z run of GFS in a few minutes. Tomorrow may have some severe potential over the NWSAP/NT's

[Michael Thomas]

I am not too sure what to make of today. I think there may be some real potential for severe storms if things come together. Moisture looks surprisingly good, even west of the ranges. Not quite as high as GFS has surface dp's but not too bad. I am not sure whether this is just really shallow moisture though. Anyway, I think that CAPE will not be too high, I suspect somewhere around 1000-1500 j/kg max. I believe this should be sufficient though considering wind shear is very strong. If we have NE surface winds by the coast in the hunter region, 0-6km shear will be around 60 knots, this is very favourable indeed. In the upper Hunter region GFS has W'ly surface winds but directional shear is still very strong. Nice to see N'ly surface winds forecast up on the NWSP as well.

Tough forecast I think. This is complicated to an extent by on going convection. There are currently storms approaching Putty. These actually look quite good, if fact I think a severe storm warning wouldn't be out of the question. My guess would be the Hunter should do well today. Once these storms move out I think we will end up with a E-W orientated boundary. I think to the north of this boundary should be the focus to the afternoons round of storms. Also, I guess that further north around the NWSP might see some nice storms too. Fingers crossed that things don't get messy and we see some nice discrete cells firing in the afternoon.

Michael

[Jimmy Deguara]

Michael,

I think you are on the money for today. This is the hidden potential day. I don't think moisture is a problem. I think all we require is sufficient heating and the storms will become intense. There is the potential for the odd supercell today.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[James]

Will be watching the sat pic and obs closely today. Will probably head out to the Hunter and see how it goes from there. Agree with both you guys about today having some interesting potential. Shear is pretty good - would like to see the surface winds a little stronger. Atmosphere dries out above 650 - potential for some good size hail.

[Michael Bath]

Agreed there is potential for organised storms this afternoon. Southern NTs, NWS&P and Upper Hunter look interesting according to GFS. MLAPS has none of the boundary layer northerlies of GFS and of course the DPs are lower.

Ballera Gas Fields in SW QLD measured a 139km/h gust in the storm at 5.37pm yesterday.

[Paul Graham]

Today has good potential for supercells in the Hunter region.  Nice curved hodographed based on morning Sydney sounding winds, excluding post frontal winds in the lowest levels.  Good luck chasing!

[Paul Graham]

Here is this morning's hodograph.  Ignore the helicity value at the bottom as that is using post frontal winds.  You can see, even excluding post frontal winds, it is pretty good.  I'd be chasing today if I could.

Sorry if you can't see the above image...my web host is not working currently.

[Shaun Galman]

Upper Western Storms 4th October 2008 Update

Hi all,
Last night's storms were the first line of action to pass through our area so far. I headed out at 6pm (after an sms from Rodney Wallbridge) to watch the storms approaching from the West, at that point they were still 75k's away on radar but I could see multiple CG and crawler almost everywhere out there on the rain front. There was no structure whatsoever which I was expecting given the moisture content was fairly high. I sat and watched it for half an hour or so then I had a cloud burst right over head so I grabbed the camera and headed home for the duration of that rain.

Russ sms'd me 20mins later so we met up and positioned ourselves for a few decent lightning photographs as the active line approached town. Crawlers were abundant (but heavily rain wrapped) and the CG became very infrequent with only 5 or 6 in total. Russ managed to catch 3 or 4 of these but I stood no chance due to keeping the rain off my camera and the inevitable- loosing all focus every time I wiped the droplets of the lens. I said to Russ that things were going pear-shaped fast and you could literally see the storm splitting around us to the North and South upon arrival. The rain set in and quite steady thus bringing our strive for a few lightning shots to an abrupt end by 8:30pm. Once home Russ confirmed by sms that the storm had split well before reaching us (visible on radar and LT obs).

Good to see a little lightning action but a disappointment in the fact I couldn't manage to get one shot with the new camera? I'm not happy with the lack of infinity setting on my lens (my auto-focus cant seem to find infinity with this kit lens) so I will hopefully have a new one in 2weeks with some sort of infinity mark. We shoot in almost pitch black 90% of the time so this will be an issue that needs addressing.

Rain totals were good, having received 12mm in total last night and a further 1mm at 9:30am this morning from a very small storm cell.

See how things pan out today?
Take care,
Shauno

[Michael Thomas]

Quite a nice example of a storm split today. The right mover actually lasted for quite a long time, I suspect this had to do with a rather straight hodograph out in the upper Hunter. To me, it appears as if the Newcastle radar is not calibrated correctly as the reflectivities seemed a bit low. A strong storm nevertheless. Good to see the Hunter fire, I must say though, it was a rather late show and overall storm coverage was surprisingly low.

Michael

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi guys,

It seems the NW winds did cut into the moisture and deplete it somewhat. But at least the boundary fired in the end. Nick Moir and I were chasing the Hunter region and Nick observed the storm split. I could not confirm it given I was aiming for the northern portion of the storm. In answer to your comment Michael T, it seems that perhaps the hodographs favoured right movers today?

Anyway, the storm shaped up nicely after a slow start. All cumulus and storms had some form of inflow attached to them and one of the little cells even had a funnel atypical of LP on the portion below the anvil. Thanks for spotting that Nick - his car was in my way when we were chatting and this feature suddenly appeared. However, it was the latter cell that dominated proceedings after 5:30pm. Not sure if any warnings were issued but the storm produced gusty winds, very heavy rain and we only experienced hailstones perhaps up to 1.5cm perhaps 15 to 20km SE of Muswellbrook? Not sure what happened in other parts of the core.

Pictures posted in the morning. Nick has a better perspective of this storm which is excellent so he should post his in the morning as well.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Richary]

There was a severe storm warning issued for a cell near Branxton moving east, so that could have been the one you guys were chasing.

[Harley Pearman]

Storm chase Sunday 4 October:

Haydee and I decided to give Sunday afternoon a go after explaining to her the CAPES and Lifted Indexes for the region and potential targets.

I though one target would be Scone / Singleton and the other west of the ranges NW of Lithgow.

Haydee seems to have an interest in thunderstorms so I decided to head NW beyond Lithgow where CAPES seemed to be around 1,200 and Lifted Index minus 5. I wanted to stay in the region of best potential but on the western side. We went up to Capertree not too far south of Mudgee.

I chose this area because I felt the southerly change along the coast had spoilt things. I appreciate how much damage a southerly change does to the coast too considering that cumulus clouds were not making it to the coast. We were in sunshine beyond Mt Victoria but with plenty of cumulus cloud towers.

One cumulonimbus cell was observed over the Oberon Plateur near Oberon but decided not to go for that because we would have been inside low cloud but underneath it.

North of Cullen Bullen we were chasing Altocumulus Castellatus most of the time. At the Capertree lookout we could see through to the lower Hunter Valley and it was cloaked in low stratus cloud and no thunderstorm tower could be seen. We stayed in that region for about an hour.

We headed back towards Lithgow then Mt Victoria and some small late afternoon showers began to develop but one cloud tower started to consolidate enough over the Oberon Plateau to warrant a watch.

Watching it from Mt Victoria it developed into a cumulonimbus cell. I positioned ourselves directly in it's path and we definitely copped a heavy downpour and one thunderclap within the cloud was audible. No hail. Amazing, it was quite warm at Mt Victoria too.

It was the only storm cell of substance to form west of the Blue Mountains. It weakened rapidly as it tracked further east. I dare say, Haydee thought it was amusing to catch the only storm cell of any substance to form in that whole region by day.

I am aware two other storm cells formed around Singleton late in the day. I saw these cloud towers close to sunset but I was concerned about the impact of that low level stratus cloud and southerly change might hide them from view which was why I decided to keep away from the coast. Also they were too far away to target them by sunset.

PS:- A word of warning to those chasing and in the grass photographing and videotaping clouds in the country. Lookout for snakes. We saw two rather large snakes chasing one another close to us assuming courtship so while looking up at the sky, also look down where you tread too and don't step on a snake.

Harley Pearman

[nmoir]

 Jimmy and i first placed ourselves in Denman then Merriwa , staying nth of a few weak Lp structured cell we tracked east to Scone with them , one cell developed a high funnell shape which is the first photograph. just as i was decding to follow one of these storms east home i stopped about 30km sth west of Musswellbrook , where jimmy was on the outskirts , he saw a rapidly devoloping storm , i was east of it and saw it split , image 2 is inflow moving into the south split and image 3 is the well structured nth cell , 4th image was lightning as the nth cell moved ENE into no roads territory.