Storm Chasing 2005

 

2005 was my first year where I actually had a keen interest in thunderstorms and weather. I begain photographing local thunderstorms on October 24 after reading about storm chasing and thunderstorm events in Australia on the internet over the winter. It turned out to be a good year to start as we had some nice local severe storms for me to photograph from my own home.

 

Decenber 28 - Gust front and hail

I was watching some distant cells out my back yard in the high humidity when I noticed what seemed to be a boiling updraft breaking through an old anvil:

This took on a contorted twisted appearance over head as the updraft continued to grow:



It soon became apparent this was part of an approaching squall line. I could soon make out a gust front to my SE. The new updraft above merged with this gustfront and bcame part of this and took on a gust front appearance as well. Some strong lightning was visible at this time.

 

Gusty outflow soon hit raising near by dust which I have on video. The storm the passed over with strong wind, heavy rain and 2.5cm hail.

 

The back end of the storm contained some impressive anvil crawlers. I was frustrated to miss most of these but eventually caught this nice one:

December 17 - Small strong storm over ocean

 

A weak storm passed over early afternoon and took on some nice structure out over the ocean that I was able to photograph on my way to Sawtell to visit my grandma.

December 8 - Rotating updraft and funnel

Today was a great storm. I woke late in the morning around 11:00 AM and was wandering around inside and just turning on the computer to check the days prospects out when I heard thunder. I raced out the front to see a lovely looking columbinimbus with rain free base developing on top of me. I grabbed the camera and started takeing pics and recording movies.

A rain shaft soon developed and as the storm passed over we got hit by heavy rain and 2.5cm hail. After the hail cleared I went out the front again and was shocked to see an impressive updraft that was slowly rotating though visible to the naked eye. I was shocked again to notice a funnel cloud form then disapate in a rope like fashion:

I was stoked with the days catch and all from my own yard!

 

November 27 - Pulseing cg's

Today I caught my first ever daytime cg lightning strike on a still camera its nothing flash but my first all the same:

 

Todays storm was fairly lightning active and I caught a number of pulseing bolts on digital camera movies:

 

October 24 and 25 - Lightning and explosive offshore cell

On the 24'th we had an impressive lightning show as a storm moved through around 8:30 pm from which I made a digi cam movie of a fairly close cg strike.




The 25'th was fairly lame at first with Coffs Harbour only receiving a weak thunder storm while other areas in NE NSW experienced severe thunderstorms such as Grafton and Casino. However late in the afternoon a messy weak thunderstorm moving out to sea around Wooli exploded off the coast as it ran into better conditions. Another followed this storm to its SW just offshore from Woolgoolga which was in my view for most of its life cycle. The BOM issued a svere thunderstorm warning for Coffs Harbour though we did never experience any severe weather. The main show though was the rapidly developing storm most likely a supercell.



 

This storm had a persistent over shooting top and anvil knuckles and as the sunset it took on a brilliant orange colour. This cell also gave me a 4 hour long flickering lightning display with occasional cg bolts.



I believe both of these offshore storms were supercells. They maintained severe radar echos for  several hours and were both quite isolated.  This is the northern cell not the one I was photographing though they were both similar: