| Another successful train chase - 12/8/99
Clyve Herbert |
| Things began to look interesting after 10am this morning after the passage of a fizzling cold front across central Victoria. Congesting cumulus streets developed by mid morning with the first low Cb in sight by 11am. After leaving Geelong to drive to Melbourne, I could already hear scattered lightning discharges on my lightning detector (am radio!). I rang Jane to get a fix on a Cb near Mornington which looked grunty and was told that it was reflecting 40-100mm/hr.
Part of the cloud street - taken from
Greensborough - look bottom left......
TCu over Dandenong - looking SE from
Abbotsford Things looked really interesting with some serious Cbs punching to the NW of Geelong, although I suspect tops were not more than 20-25,000'. I noticed also that there was considerable shear around 20,000', and suspected some serious cold air advection in the middle and upper layers behind the dissipating cold front.
Finally arriving in Melbourne and running my 1553 Melbourne-Cranbourne, a line of fast moving Cbs had already moved to the south of Port Phillip Bay heading eastward. Arriving at Dandenong with my train, I noticed that there was a continuous rather grunty line of Cbs with occasional cgs aligned east-west. I rang Jane again to be told that there were echoes in the Cranbourne area which had peaked at 100+ when the cell crossed the coast over easter Port Phillip Bay and were now running at 40-100. I left Dandenong & sped to Cranbourne passing into the Cb line on the outskirts of Cranbourne encountering 1cm hail, torrential rain, close cg strikes,lowerings and a gust front. Some of the side streets adjacent to the railway line were suffering flash flooding. Remarkably the precipitation line was barely more than 3km wide.
Arriving at Cranbourne in torrential rain, hail & thunder, I then returned with my train to Dandenong, re-entering the rain core again for barely morethan several minutes, in the meantime capturing a few photographs from the cab as I sped along.
Green light for GO!!! There's no safer way to core puch than with a 360 tonne train at 115kph!! Whooppeee.....
The gust front looms over Cranbourne.....the core punch produced 1cm hail, torrential rain and cg's!!! From the train on the Cranbourne line
in Lyndhurst Arriving at Dandenong in dry conditions the line still appearing to the south, backbuilding towards Melbourne CBD. Panorama - J ONeill (ASWA Archive)
Webcam images (courtesy of omni-net) Andrew McDonald rang shortly before I arrived in the city to report that he was on his roof getting very excited by the surprise appearance of such an unseasonal outbreak. Approaching Melbourne, a large gust front and lowerings appeared to the south and west of the CBD.
Gust front over Melbourne A cell to the west passed over the city at about 1800 with torrential rain & cgs. .....another successful train chase!!! |
| Many thanks go to Anthony
Cornelius (ASWA - Qld) for supplying the following images: |
