Storm Chase 4th September, 2004

This weekend was looking to shape up nicely with an upper and surface trough moving over SE QLD on Saturday and with an upper low and cold air aloft, storm chances over the weekend looked quite nice. Saturday was progged for -2 LIs over SE QLD. Shear was fairly poor in the lower levels however the upper levels were quite nice. Convergence was setup along the western ranges on Saturday where an ENE met a WSW wind flow.

RH was setup nicely with plenty of moisture setup in the lower levels and then drying out in the 500s. With temps in the low to mid 20s on Saturday, it didnt take too long for things to develop. I woke up at 11:30 Saturday morning with an active cell just to the SSW of me about 5km away. This was producing nice constant thunder and the outflow winds from this cell were quite cold.

The northern edge of the cell collapsed when it passed over me however a very nice storm was developing over the Beenleigh area and soon became quite lightning active putting out cgs every few seconds.

Reports from Mount Gravatt had hail with this storm. Another cell quickly built up to the SW of me again so I headed to Archerfield Airport to get a few pictures.

I was talking to a friend on the phone at the time while getting panoramas and decided to head off after a cg came down within 1km and gave gunshot thunder.

I stayed in the car park at Archerfield Airport and I received pea sized hail briefly before turning to heavy rainfall. After about 5 minutes, I decided to head back home. The rain was very heavy, so much so that I was doing 40km/hr with my windscreen wipers flat out. I drove 50 metres and the rain stopped instantly and I could see the whiteout conditions behind me in the rear vision mirror. This certainly was a great start to Spring and the weekend.

More pictures can be found here.

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