| We had been waiting for this night eagerly all week. Through the week some of the Melbourne contingent arranged to meet at Mt Dandenong if things were looking good. There had been storms around all week and the day before, a giant cell went up over Yea as well as a spectacular electrical storm between Ballarat and Geelong overnight. |
| The 11am soundings once again were not particularly spectacular. LI's were only just negative, no CAPE to speak of and no jet stream. Against that, the tot-tots were around 50-51 and the SRH was 62, enough to get some action. However this had been the sort of soundings Melbourne had had all week, and there had been some amazing storms around (see previous reports). |
| At around 4pm I checked the Foxtel satellite and saw a massive, thick and distinct line of storms form running from Mildura to Warrnambool - a distance of at least 500kms. The BoM had issued a severe thunderstorm warning for this line so now everything pointed to a fantastic night ahead. |
|
| I arrived up at Mt Dandenong around 6.30pm, well ahead of the arranged meeting time, to get a good position at the lookout for when the front came through. I went for a stroll to pass the time and had a look around. There were cells pulsing to the north, with a nice cell over Warburton 40kms to the NE, but difficult to see through the trees. |
| Jane, who I hadn't met before, was there when I got back. She told me that the line of storms was still a few hours off, that she had arranged regular calls from Jimmy and Michael to tell us what was on the radar, and also that Andrew McDonald was around Yea again and would join us later. The news about the line of storms amazed me because the anvils from this line were already stretching above us. |
| Dane Newman was the first other person to arrive. We sat there exchanging stories during which time Andrew rang to say he was coming (carrying pizza to us all the way from Yea - a good 60kms to the north of us). The sun had now disappeared and the line was becoming easier to see. Blair Trewin arrived as we got more updates from the NSW guys as well as Clyve down in Geelong. Clyve told us that he was getting a fair bit of lightning. At this stage we couldn't see anything but a magnificent cell had formed to our north over Benalla. Andrew had arrived by now and was wondering whether coming back to Melbourne had been the right thing to do. The Benalla storm had a similar structure to the classic supercell near Orange. |
|
Radar images courtesy of Bureau of Meteorology |
| As it got darker we finally began to see the lightning. At first it was just occasional but as the sun set we could see that it was a very active storm. Clyve rang and told us about a fantastic gust front he was seeing which was accompanied by plenty of lightning. From our vantage point we could see from south of Geelong to due north. It was a case of where and when to look as the storms got closer. Jimmy rang at this point very excited about a cell near Hamilton and also to tell us that there was an area running 100mm+/hr heading straight for us situated at that time around Melton, possibly with hail. |
| As the storms got closer the gust front which had formed, actually began to build into large cumulus as the storm regathered strength. The lightning was almost non-stop and cameras were clicking away and Jane had her video camera trying to have it facing in the right direction at the right time. There were a heap of people other than us up there watching the storm so it came as quite a surprise that the security guards threw us off at 10pm (they close all the gates at that time). |
| I ended up losing the others in the mayhem that followed and ended up watching the lightning, now consistently blue, driving home. I stopped at Doncaster though and managed to take a few shots of the spectacular display before it died out without even spilling a drop of rain at home |
| A great evening was had by all. It was great to meet the others for the first time. Next time an alternative site should be decided on before we get thrown off the mountain. |
