| A spectacular chase was
had on 22nd January 1999. The temperature was around average at 28C, but it was very
humid. The 11am soundings were quite promising, with total-totals around 50 and no
Convective Inhibition to speak of, auguring well for when the atmosphere became more
heated. However, there was not a lot of shear, so I wasn't expecting to see a storm
of the severity I came across. I checked the hourly satellite throughout the early
afternoon as well as making visual checks and eventually left home at about 5pm,
originally headed for Benalla after seeing the Severe Storm advice for the area. By the
time I got to Sydney Rd I changed my mind as I could see a fair sized cell with an
overshooting top over to the west around Melton or Ballarat. I took the Ring Road around to the Princes Hwy and travelled down to Werribee where there is plenty of open flat land. By the time I got out on to the back roads, the CGs were quite frequent to the NW and very spectacular. The You Yangs weren't visible and towards Geelong it was very ominous.
Severe storm over the You Yangs
I decided to stay put for a while to see what developed and to attempt some lightning shots. After half an hour or so a new development started almost right above me. Also about this time the original storm, which had shown signs of dying, kicked off again, this time with a very distinct hail shaft and some very vivid CG's. The storm that started developing above me had moved about 3kms to the east and it also started dropping CG's pretty frequently. This storm soon had some interesting base features and a suspicious hook shaped cloud formed at the back end of the storm. It was rotating quite quickly and I was wondering if it was a good idea to be where I was. I decided to move a bit further east from the area so I drove around trying to avoid the worst of the hail shafts while trying not to run off the road while being distracted by pulsing lightning all around me. This task became more and more difficult so I ended up just stopping on a dirt road and waiting for the storm to head further east.
Storm developing to the south of Werribee.
A hook developing?
Wall cloud & lowering to the SW of the cell.
About 7pm or so (I didn't have a watch) the entire eastern horizon (from N to S) was incredibly black, probably as black a sky as I've seen (the photo doesn't do it justice). This had the effect of both highlighting the hail shafts as well as making the lightning very easy to see. At the rear of the storm there was still some very obvious rotation and my excitement level rose as what looked to be a wall cloud formed on the western side of the storm. There was some scud around this lowering just before the photo was taken and I was hoping against hope that a funnel would form. This didn't happen but mother nature made up for it by providing this spectacular scene about half an hour before sunset.
Close to sunset, the back end of the storm takes on an ethereal look, complete with mammatus, flanking line & inflow band.
View from Dohertys Road
I continued to follow the storm as it moved slowly east. I got back to Werribee and all of a sudden powerful CGs (the ones that you can still "see" a second later) started dropping every 5 seconds or so from the rear of the storm within 1km. I love storms and lightning, but I hate driving when it is that close, so it took me a while to get back towards Melbourne. Driving home along the freeway was awesome, with four succinct areas of lightning from NE to SE. Some of the strikes were spectacular, reminded me a lot of Darwin. I made it to Doncaster Shoppingtown roof at about 10pm and there were about 20 cars there watching the display. I sat there for an hour until the lightning started to die down and then finally made it home. A very worthwhile chase, albeit a slow one, with tons of lightning, an incredible sky, a possible hook in the cloud and the brief hope of witnessing a tornado. Certainly more than I expected from today and a great success. Total chase distance was about 170kms and basically covered Nth Balwyn to Werribee and back plus plenty of dirt roads to the north of Werribee. As a postscript to this, a funnel was videoed in Sunbury around the time I saw the lowering. I was not looking toward Sunbury, however, but it confirms that this storm was severe. |
