Storm Chase 19th-20th February, 2005
1400km later, explosive updrafts, massive strobing cg's and plenty of close calls with cg's, I am over the moon, it would have to go down as one of the best chases I have had. Jeff and I were talking about heading out to Moree on Saturday night because Friday night had fired so nicely. We ended up leaving for Goondiwindi at about 5pm my time and arrived there at 10:30pm. There was a few distant strikes to the WSW of us but nothing much else so we decided to get an early night.
Unfortunately for us, the Telstra WAP service had been down all evening so we couldn't check the radar or lightning tracker. At about 3:30am, we got woken up by very heavy rain so we checkd the radar which was finally working again and it was just a few showers moving through Goondiwindi area. We woke up at about 5:30am and there was a lot of mid/high level cloud coming in from the NW however it was clearing out fairly fast.
Jeff sent Anthony an sms update to see how today was shaping up and he was going to head out here too because it was looking quite nice around Moree area. We had brekky at Maccas and then drove around a bit and took a few pics of the town. From there we headed about 10km west and sat up on there on this dam wall and waited for things to develop. There was a few Cu that developed just after lunchtime to the SW of Goondiwindi so we headed out. After waiting around out of town for a few hours, we met up with Anthony and Bryan and we headed to Moree.
Things were quite dry looking and anything that went through the cap didn't last long due to the lack of moisture. We waited and waited for things to develop but nothing wanted to develop and at 4pm we were gonna head back home. To the SW we could see quite a strong storm so Anthony checked this on radar and it was to the SW of Narrabri heading SE. A decision was made to head out after this because we didn't drive 600km for nothing.
It was evident that it was quite a strong storm by the massive updrafts going up into the anvil, the huge backshear and vertical structure of it. As we entered into Narrabri we got a good look at the storm. It had a nice wall cloud under it, powerful updrafts, massive backshear and was very high topped. After a few pics and quick radar check we continued south making no progress in catching the storm because of the strong lower level shear pushing it to the SE.
At Baan Baa we took a few pics of the massive storm however it was beginning to weaken now and was sliding too far to the south for us to continue chasing. Jeff and I went to a lookout in Boggabri to get a few more pics of it and I ran a bit of time lapse of it. We all headed to Boggabri to get something to eat and some fuel but nothing was open so we pulled over and talked for a while when all of a sudden a massive cg came out of a developing cell just to the west of us.
It came sideways out of the top of the anvil, went west for a few km and then dropped. Another cell to the north of it did the same thing so we headed south of Boggabri and setup. The storm was now getting quite big and was dumping some awesome branchy cg's. Unfortunately I only got a few pics on my new Powershot Pro 1 before the battery died so I had to resort back to the A30 which still took some awesome pics.
After taking a heap of cg pics, for about half an hour, a massive cg dropped no more than 1km away so we ran for the cars and packed up. Another cg dropped around the same place so Anthony and Bryan headed off and we were gonna too but decided not to because we didn't come all this way not to get good pics. We held our cams out the window and got cg pic after cg pic. Jeff scored an awesome cg which hit no more than 200 metres away and looks terrific. We counted at least 20-25 cg's which were very close. After this show, we decided to head back north to meet up with Anthony and Bryan who were in Narrabri. There was another massive storm that had developed right on Narrabri that was pumping out insane lightning.
We got a radar update and decided to head north and hopefully miss the most intense part of it. On radar there was 2 storms that were merging so we were careful of damaging winds/hail. We just got through the western edge of it with some heavy rain and the storm passed to the SE. It was pushing an amazing 5-6 strikes/second with cg's, crawlers and cc's going insane. There was a massive backshear on it and was very high topped. After getting a few pics of this we headed north again.
We scored another 2 sessions of awesome cg's before heading back home. All up we did just over 1400km and will go down as one of the best chases I have had. I arrived home at 4:30am and had 6 hours sleep. During the 2 days, I had 9 hours sleep and I think it will be a long time before I see anything else as good.
More pictures can be found here.
Radar