TCu and Cb's explode at about 4:00pm as the cap breaks to the W of Melbourne.

After a quiet period, TCu grows to the Cb stage and begins to get interesting W of Melbourne near Rockbank as the trough gets closer at 5:35pm

     

The base of a small Cu grows almost overhead.  This cell eventually developed into a large Cb producing a funnel, severe hail and flash flooding.   Compare this to the second of these two captures taken just 30 minutes later which shows a very dark, strongly developing base. 

       

Small, narrow funnel from the above cell at 6pm.  This was about 1.5km to my NE while I was near Truganina (about 22km due W of Melbourne) and it persisted for just under 2 minutes.

        

An intense microburst with text book rainfoot developed as the cell let go in a big way at 6:30pm to my NE, placing it somewhere just SW of Deer Park.

A *massive* raindrop on my windscreen (one of dozens that big) which preceded an increase in the size of hail from 1cm to 2-2.5cm.  I as in Derrimut at the time and the hail fell for about 5 minutes from about 6:50pm until 6:55pm.

*SPLASH*  A large hailstone lands in the puddle on the roadside.

     

Some of the larger stones I found lying around.  The largest were about 2.5cm with an average size of about 0.8-1.0cm. 

     

The second funnel of the day looking SE towards Altona at 7:00pm.  This one persisted for about 3 minutes.

     

After chasing the above cell to Footscray I headed back out to the Western Ring Road.  A strong base was developing to my NW and as I started to head towards it it began to dump its load right up the road ahead of me.  At about 8:10pmI drove into a wall of torrential rain and hail to 2cm and winds gusting to about 90km/h.  Visiblity was merely metres and cars came to a halt on the EJ Whitten bridge in East Keilor.  Edging slowly forward, the cars (including mine) were hit by what looked to be a vortex of some sort which extremely strong winds gusting over 100km/h.  The captures show a road sign blown over in the initial gust and then visibility during the heavier period of rain and hail and winds.    I checked this area later to find a row of about 30 road work "lego blocks" (the big white and red things which look like plastic barriers) blown over and some damage to trees.

           

I contacted the BoM about the microburst and composed myself enough to get some nice sunset photos and video.  Cells were still developing along the trough to the S, W and NW and lightning was becoming more prevalent.

As darkness fell, Melburnians were treated to one of the best lightning shows seen in many years.  CC's and CG's ripped across the sky for almost 5 hours as waves of storms developed to the NW and moved SE across the city and surrounds.  These are only a few of the better CC's and CG's taken from Somerton.