|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
STORMPLANET - Severe Event Reports -
Storm Chase!!
How to read
this report
Chase Report - 1st November 2004 The
Setup..... David and I spoke on Sunday night and we agreed to meet at 6am at his place with an initial target area in mind of Wagga. Given the early development of storms on the previous day and a relatively weak cap, we figured we would want to be in our target area no later than midday. I woke up at 5am and left my house at just after 5:30am. It was warm in Melbourne – probably about 20C. I arrived at David’s place at 6:10am and we were on the road (in his car) by 6:11am! We headed up the Melba Hwy to Yea and then cut across through Seymour to the Hume Hwy. After a brief coffee stop in Seymour, we headed North. It was quite cloudy
although we could see some nice clear air to the N and NE. As we
reached the clearing edge of the cloud, we were treated to some
spectacular iridescence in a mackerel cirrus band. We had the radio
tuned in waiting for the BoM to come on and the first humorous event of
the day occurred with the radio announcer interviewing someone about
unemployment. He said, “So, given that the unemployment rate is
currently low, does that mean that the employment rate is high?” At
this point David nearly lost control of the car as we laughed at the
intelligence of such a question. These Tasmanians... Anyway…back to the weather… After another brief stop at Glenrowan for breakfast (Maccas) and fuel at around 9am (T = 25C, Td = 14C), we continued North towards Albury and then on to Wagga. We were initially a little concerned about the cloud pushing in from the W however as we approached Albury, we could see plenty of clear sky to the W with nice patches of AcCas scattered around the place. We passed through Albury just before 10am with clear skies and AcCas in all directions. Thicker cloud remained to our S with some distant cirrus to the W. Funny thing #2 for the day…those interested in car racing would know what a car looks like when an engine blows….some poor bugger found out the hard way on the Hume just S of Albury with smoke billowing from the exhaust as their engine went…hehe. We arrived in Wagga at about 11:30am with the sky looking somewhat glum. We headed to the Wagga library to check the soundings, radar, sat pics and AWS observations. We noted a short line of cells to our S near Culcairn which we soon found out that Robbie Alexander was underneath. We left the library and headed to the lookout in Wagga and waited and waited, all the while getting reports of CG’s and hail from the cell to our S. Finally things started to kick off around Wagga with some showers/weak storms developing to A few phone calls
and a quick discussion resulted in us heading N towards Junee. We were
hoping to pick something up on the back of the cells as the line moved
slowly to the East. Rainy skies with the odd burst of static had us
feeling somewhat disappointed but we pushed on to Temora where we hoped
to get internet access to see if we were going to get anything more for
the day. Temora....to stay or not to stay We found the Temora
library and loaded radar and satellite images for the area we were in.
We were not surprised to see the storms that had passed over us were not
impressive on radar but we were surprised by the LARGE isolated
storms W of Hay and Griffith (200km to our W). The observations out
there were not great (T = 29C and Td = 7C) but these storms were
producing large amounts of lightning. Our options were to hang
around in Temora and hope for something to develop behind the initial
line of storms (which had incidentally missed Temora) OR to head W and
intercept the cells out near Griffith (which were moving ESE at
60km/h). We were both pretty keen on seeing some lightning so at about 4pm we headed out of the library with the mindset of heading west. We walked out of the library to be greeted by a solid RFB and a big rumble of thunder. A small cell was developing just W of Temora and was going to pass just W and S of the town. We moved to the outskirts of town and had a look at this cell before deciding to continue our journey west. This decision meant we had to drive through the cell and we encountered some torrential rain and soft small hail (ie when it hit the windscreen it looked a bit like sleet). On the other side, we stopped to view it from the back and get a few photos. I managed to catch a CG on video (without knowing it at the time) but apart from that, the cell didn’t appear to be doing too much. We continued west. We could make out a
distant anvil to our West which looked HUGE.
The gustfront
(I’ll call it that because technically that’s what it was – it was just
too dry in the low levels for it to have a shelf cloud to mark the gust
front) was now only about 5km to our W and was looking reasonable but we
quickly realised that the stronger part of the dust/outflow was going to
pass about 3km south of town. After a quick check of the maps, I had us
heading South along a road to intercept the storm. Cleared paddocks of red
dirt to our west gave us a perfect view of the approaching storm. We
stopped away from some trees and set up our cameras for what we thought
would be a bit of a dusty gustfront pushing across the freshly ploughed
paddock beside us. Decision time again...
Driving back to
Wagga, we spotted some nice cells off to the far SE and South, and as
darkness approached, we saw quite a few flashes of lightning from
these cells (although more so from the cells to the SE over the ranges).
We booked our accommodation in Wagga (which had a balcony looking S) but
we decided not to head into the ranges to the SE and try and get
lightning pics from these cells. Instead, we grabbed some KFC for
dinner (another healthy meal – although it was at this point we realised
that we forgot to have lunch…hehe) and watched the lightning from the
balcony whilst we loaded radar and satellite pics to see if anything
would develop to the NW and give us our own lightning show.
A
HUGE cheer was let out by both David and myself and this continued for
the next 5 flashes. The lighting was quite infrequent but we were
just happy to see any at all. David had chased the area previously
and he found us a nice clear area North of town which gave us decent views
in the direction of the storms. We set up our camera gear for a few
minutes before a shower/weak storm moved over us and forced us back to
the car for 5 minutes. Whilst this was happening, the cells to the NW
were picking up in intensity and the lightning was becoming more
frequent. Finally, at about 12:30am, we decided to call it a night as the cell closest to us was weakening rapidly and moving too far away for decent photography. We were slightly tempted to head N to Temora as we could see another cell about 100km to our N which was flashing away brilliantly, however, we were both exhausted after driving 830km and starting the chase 17hrs earlier.
2nd
November 2004 We left the motel
in Wagga at 9:30am. Got breakfast at Maccas (yep – clearly the chasers
diet) and headed to the Wagga lookout but it didn't look much. Cells
were developing off to the E over the ranges and we figured we would be
too far S and W for any decent action. Call from Anthony Cornelius at
10:30am increased our enthusiasm as he indicated we might not be in a
bad position albeit there was a chance it might dry out as NW’ly winds
were pushing in not far above the surface. We headed to the Wagga
library to check the usuals (sounding, radar, satellite, model runs,
etc). We pretty much decided to chase the strong front progged to move
across Victoria in the afternoon due to our commitments back in
Melbourne that night at about 7pm. A big upper trough was progged to
drop 500mb temps from -18C to -28C over Melbourne within 12hrs. This
strong upper trough created havoc with the shear over the SW Slopes
and NE Victoria with 500mb winds progged to reach 75knts. Supercells
were quite the chance although it was questionable whether there would
be enough instability to withstand such strong shear as it was still
quite dry in the lower levels. The surface situation was quite complex
with 2 or 3 separate weak troughs sitting through central and south
eastern NSW. The Wagga sounding was very nice with LI’s of about -6C,
awesome wind shear and a near perfect cap. As tempted as we were, we
still thought we would be too far S and W for the best action for the
day. We left Wagga
library just on midday and saw NICE cells way off to the NE near Cowra
and Goulburn and we cursed not having another day to chase. After
getting lost in the outskirts of Wagga, we headed S to The Rock where we
stopped to look at some dark based, low topped cumulus and to take in
the shear which was blatantly evident above us with the Cu racing
SSE at about 25knts and then the AltoCu racing faster to the E at about
60knts. (Video
12) We continued S
still thinking we would intercept the front somewhere over northern
Victoria and after filling up with fuel and lunch (McDonalds again…hehe),
we headed through Albury and across the border into Victoria.
Not far from Wodonga, we noted some very dark skies to our SW and W and
the highway kindly took us in the right direction for a closer
inspection. Some weak showers and storms had developed ahead of the
front in the warm air over NE Victoria. With upper levels rapidly
cooling, there was quite a bit of instability in this region. We turned
the AM radio on and we were surprised by the somewhat frequent bursts of
static coming from these cells. We stopped at the
Springhurst turnoff on the Hume Hwy to watch a cell just to the W to see
if it had any lightning as it had a decent rain shaft and a
somewhat high (5000ft) but solid RFB. We didn’t see any
lightning but heard a few rumbles of thunder and we were lucky enough
for the RFB to let go right over us! While we watched
this cell, I noticed an interesting RFB about 40km off to the NW.
It had a bit of a bowl shape to it and looked quite reasonable given the
distance we were from it. A quick phone call from Anthony confirmed
this was a nice storm with a decent red (100mm/hr+) core and it was
racing SE towards us at 75km/h! Between this cell
approaching us, the cell now off to our SE and another cell to our SW,
we had quite a bit to look at. The cell to the NW was starting to look
really interesting with a short inflow band developing and a
reasonably thick anvil. I was starting to think all kinds of
things given the amount shear and instability in the area. As this cell
got closer, we could see hail shafts falling out of the back of
the updraft base which was looking more and more solid and green
as it approached. The main RFB passed to our S but the gustfront
developed an awesome layered shelf cloud and became VERY
photogenic. Shortly after, we headed a bit further down the Hume Hwy where the main precipitation core had passed over but we didn’t find any hail bigger than about 1.5cm (we were a bit disappointed…hehe). Again we were blown away with the luck we had had with this trip so far. We continued S along the Hume with the hope of still intercepting the front somewhere in north central Victoria. Unfortunately it clouded over quite a bit and although we stopped to watch the front pass over, it turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax (especially after what we had heard from the Melbourne Cup at Flemington where dust and torrential rain had nearly blown all the race-goers away. We weren’t too disappointed given the things we had seen over the past two days.
We continued home
through the ranges to David’s place and we watched the external
temperature gauge drop from 29C near Albury before the first storm to
just 11C on the Hume Hwy near Seymour as we crossed the front and
moved into the FREEZING air mass following. All in all it was a great
chase with many highs and lows (no pun intended…hehe) and my last before
I head overseas to work in the Canadian ski fields for 5 months. What a
way to start and finish my chase season!!
Soundings....
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
All communication to All content Copyright © David C Simpson unless otherwise noted. Contact Us | Copyright | Disclaimer | Sitemap | |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
T a k i n g A u s t r a l i a b y
S t o r m ! 
