25th September 2001

I'd been watching today develop nicely and predicted today's hail in the south yesterday with some quite cold air moving in aloft.  Some quite strong updrafts pushed up to the WSW of here (NE Suburbs) early this arvo and topped about 24,000ft at times and as the cell became better established it tracked a little more ENE'ly with the upper NW'ly flow having some effect on it.  It was pink on radar for about 4 frames and I couldn't stand it any more.  I headed out with video camera in hand and raced up Plenty road.  I got about 8km N of here and lo and behold a significant lowering was just off to my NW.  I'm still trying to decide if this was possibly a wall cloud. This lowering persisted for another 10-15 minutes before being blasted by outflow.  I got out to Yan Yean and watched as the cell weakened and dissipated.  I picked up another cell around Epping and got some micro hail (about 0.3cm) and followed this/drove in this cell from Epping over to Hurstbridge before running out of petrol and roads so I went home. Quite an interesting little chase.

30th September 2001

This great line of storms on formed on the trough.  Our sounding showed a nice cap at about 720mb which surpressed convection until maximum heating at about 4pm when the temps across west central and north central Victoria pushed into the high 20's/low 30's and the convergence along the pre-frontal trough saw moisture rocket up with DP's going from 6-7C this morning up to 15-16C this afternoon.  This combination kicked off these awesome storms which roared along at 100+km/h due to the 50-60knt LLJ and 60-70knt MLJ which were ripping across Victoria at the time.  I must say we are quite lucky here in Victoria today as had we had slightly more NE'ly surface flow we could've potentially been looking at quite a serisous severe weather threat.

Jane and Robert had headed out to western Victoria but I stayed home and studied for much of the day (though always keeping an eye on the radar).  At about 4pm a line of showers running due N/S formed from Echuca to Seymour and this immediately got my interest.  I checked the sat pic and it was clear that a trough had moved over the region as it was marked by a nice line of Cu. I jumped on the roof but couldn't see much though it was obvious that middle levels were destabilizing rapidly.  I'd noticed earlier in the day the DP at Horsham (W Vic) had gone from 7C to 15C in the space of a few hours and soon upon checking the Melbourne obs it was evident that this was happening here too.  With the temp at 4:30pm sitting on 28C and the DP now on 15C things certainly got interesting.  A large shower popped up on radar near Charlton (NW of Bendigo) and started racing SSE at about 100km/h and before it reached Bendigo it was in the green. 

I knew this was a siginficant cell (due to the poor radar out there) so I grabbed my stuff and was out the door in 15 minutes.  Aiming to head to Ballarat to intercept, I headed out the Western Ring Road then onto the Western Highway where Anthony Cornelius called me to let me know that cells were developing from Bendigo to Ballarat and racing SSE at over 100km/h.  By the time I'd reached Rockbank (just on the W outskirts of Melbourne) there was a cell to my SE near Avalon and another coming down from the NW near Bacchus Marsh.  I saw my first CG just before Melton and I knew of a good viewing spot on the outskirts of Melton.  I got there and set up the video camera and watched as the cells to the SE and the NW spat out CG's and CC's and being nicely backlit by the setting sun. 

Strong surface winds at the time made videoing difficult - even on a tripod - I recorded gusts up to 45km/h with the Kestrel.  I watched a cell develop due W of me and it spat out some close lightning before racing off to the S.  I stayed as long as I could before what had now developed into a line of storms moved overhead.  Driving back towards Melbourne over the highway overpass was interesting with the CB radio squeeling 3 times and CG's then hitting within 500m of me (was quite fun...hehe).  I videoed a bit while driving near Rockbank and scored a CLOSE CG straight down the road (no more than 500m) (see capture where its extremely bright - followed by the next capture which shows a faint CG which is the next frame after the strike).  I made it up to Mt Riddley just N of Craigeburn on the Hume Hwy just ahead of the line of storms and one particularly close strike hit while I was parked at the turnoff to Mt Riddley.  I was in the car videoing lightning and i thought i'd get out for a second to grab a shot of the top of the hill and FLASH...."$&#$ that was close" ...CRRRRRAAACCKKKKBBBBOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM. It was the loudest thunder i'd heard in a very very long time.  Turns out it hit the top of the hill (just 350m away) and to think that 2 minutes earlier I was considering heading up there.... hehe.  After that I sat in the car but overall I got plenty of lightning on video.