Storm Chase 24th October, 2004
Today was showing quite nice potential with the dryline sitting around Oakey, a decent cap, decent wind shear and nice instability however there was a lack of moisture just above the surface which could of been a problem. The sea breeze was expected to kick in at around 4pm so this would provide the trigger for development that afternoon. I headed out to Boonah lookout with some friends and waited there for development. Temps were pushing into the high 30's and there was a stiffling westerly wind. We waited for about 2 hours there and just after 3pm the sea breeze came through and almost instantly towers went up to the west of us. It was quite hazy to see now because of the amount of moisture being pumped in. We kept an eye on the radar and watched a nice storm build up and track towards Oakey so we headed off towards Rosewood area and waited there.
By 4:30pm, it was looking very nice and the radar showed a red core just about to enter Oakey area. There was more development happening just to the south of us as well which would eventually link up with the Oakey cell and become severe.
We headed SE towards Boonah once again as the developing severe storm had now done a right turn towards Boonah area. We stopped at an empty field to get some photos of the very nice rfb and we witnessed a wall cloud underneath the updraft area as well as an area of raised dust.
At 5:30pm, the stormpassed over us and produced very heavy rainfall and a few small bits of hail. Little did we know that no less than 10km from us most likely to the NE which looked very black, there was cricketball sized hail being dumped from it. At 5:40, we pulled over into a carpark to get pictures of the backend of the storm which was full of mammantus and looked spectacular in the setting sun.
More pictures can be found here.
Radar