Internet History in the Making!
Les Crossan - MSC and ASWA International
Another logon to Virgin Net in the UK and ICQ at around 2300GMT on the 21st of January found me sitting at a loose end after replying to all my mail, news and exchanging the usual "g'day" and other greetings and replies to assorted emails from around the globe, so I thought I'd do something different this evening and logged on to the Melbourne Webcam and the BoM Melbourne local radar on the ASWA site for a quick peek at what was going on.
Radar was interesting, was showing single cells
developing in lines and clumps travelling SW--->NE this was borne out by the
webcam which was showing showery activity in lines over Melbourne itself. General ICQ chit
- chat was interrupted by me getting an interesting looking lowering from the webcam, this
lowering looked like a scuddy funnel to me:
Scuddy lowering to the top right of the image.
Image courtesy Omni - Cam, Melbourne, Vic
Note the showers in lines.
Things got a little more animated after this and Jane told me that cool SW airstreams are known to produce showers with funnels, waterspouts and even the odd tornado, in fact very similar to a UK NW airstream indeed this would have me reaching out for the car keys and camera right away.... Not long after Jane paged me on ICQ asking to check out frames 2 and 3 of the Melbourne webcam:
Frame 2 - PRONG! in the distance
Frame 3 - Another prong in the distance!
Images courtesy Omni - Cam, Melbourne, Vic
As it turned out these prongs developed into funnel clouds one of extended down between 500 & 1000m over St. Kilda in Port Philip Bay and the other one descended for three or four minutes but then retracted. These events were witnessed by Bureau staff in Melbourne & 2 ASWA members - Peter Corlett & Dean Sgarbossa (Dean was on work experience at the Bureau at the time), the above two images were sent to them when they asked me to but alas they were a couple of minutes too early...
A third funnel was reported this day over the Melbourne CBD but methinks I was long asleep by then.
It happened again a few days later:
Interesting lowering to the top right.
Image courtesy of Omni - Cam, Melbourne, Vic
The dark area isn't a gust front, the shutters were jammed halfway open (:
Another day, another lowering on the coast, this one had Jane ONeill out the door in a hurry, but nothing came of it...
.....A successful couple of webcam chases!
MSC has train chasers, it seems that the international members of MSC / ASWA can make themselves useful as webcam chasers!
Many thanks to Jane ONeill who assisted me in this webcam chase, is this a first for the Internet?
Les (UK)