Storm Chase 27th October, 2004

Today was looking like a very nice setup with a trough and a front pushing through towards the coast later in the day. There was plenty of instability, nice moisture and nice shear. The sounding that morning represented a perfect situation with a strong cap that would most likely be broken in the afternoon. Jeff picked me up around 1pm and we ran through the sat loops, obs and avn runs to see where the best place would be to chase. After much thought, we headed off towards Warwick. We ran into AC up near Boonah and we headed out near Beaudesert for a look at the radar and sky to see where the best location to chase would be.

We decided to head south over the border to Kyogle and take things from there. We arrived at Casino McDonalds at 3:30 where we all met up with Michael Bath and Dave Ellem. A nice rfb developed just to our SW and we headed off to a lookout near Lismore where Roddy met up with us as well. The rfb moved over us and then it rained for about 5 minutes and produced a nice close cg and then another cg 5 minutes later before weakening.

Jeff and I decided to head north towards Byron Bay while Anthony and the rest of the crew headed towards Evans Head. There was a small line of cumulus congestus heading NE towards the coast that was very capped but was retaining its form nicely so we got ahead of the line and then found a lookout at Byron Bay where we waited.

It wasn't long before it absolutely took off and exploded showing some nice structure at times. We decided to head off north after a very close encounter with a flang 200 metres away which lit up the entire place like daytime and just about sent us to our feet. There was an insane gust front developing on it too that we could make out but because of the speed it was moving at, we had to rocket north ahead of it.

We stopped at the Brunswick Heads turnoff where we had some updates from friends about the radar and took a few pics before heading to Brunswick Heads Beach to get the most insane offshore light show I have seen for a while. All up we travelled just over 400km today. Certainly a nice finish to the day

More pictures can be found here.

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