Unfortunately, we both had commitments in the morning (and missed out on seeing the rotating meso that Clyve Herbert witnessed), so our chase didn't get underway until 1.10pm. We headed for the Western Ring Road which allowed us options of where we wanted to go. Ten minutes into the chase we got a precursor of what was to come as we drove through a very heavy shower.
 
Thanks to several updates from Jane ONeill (who also told us about the rotating meso and raised dust Clyve saw - lucky so and so) we headed towards the Princes Fwy. We could see enormous towers going up in a big line from south of Geelong to around Sunbury.

The gust front was well formed by this stage and there were a lot of lowerings. Jane was kind enough to keep ringing us with radar updates as well as visual and we eventually turned off at Hoppers Crossing, by which time (about 1.45pm) the gust front was right above us. The sky to the WSW was an incredible green hue to it and we both agreed that there was some major hail in this part of the storm. We stopped and sat in the car in an open area just to the north of Hoppers Crossing with the gust front blowing dust everywhere, more lowerings as well as powerful CG's about 5kms away.

We got another call from our loyal updater saying that this cell was probably going to rain itself out but one to the north was intensifying, so we headed towards the Western Hwy along Tarneit then Hopkins Rd. It was pitch black by now and as we pulled into a servo at Rockbank to get lunch, the storm hit.

Looking SW from Melbourne towards Geelong
 

Looking East from Melbourne towards Mt Dandenong
Photos courtesy of Omni-Cam.com

We sat undercover near the petrol bowser for 30 mins or so watching the CGs get closer and closer. There were at least 12 pulsing strikes within a km of us and 1 hit the power pole across the road (100m or so) as Andrew was talking to Jane. Strangely, the thunder from it was not loud at all! We headed off shortly afterwards to try and get behind the beast into some clear air. There were signs of flash flooding everywhere so full marks to Andrew for his driving in these conditions. We turned north to Diggers Rest to head towards the backbuilding area to the NW.
 
We got to Diggers Rest and decided to head towards Woodend as that was the only clear area we could see. We kept going and going until past Kyneton, we had a sense of deja vu as another very threatening looking cell complete with another extremely green core made an appearance from behind some lower level cloud. Although not as electrically active as the one near Melton it looked threatening enough and there were more lowerings here, though they tended to be more shortlived than the earlier cell. We headed right towards it and were expecting hail but just got extremely heavy rain and strong wind gusts - strong enough to push the car around a bit.
 
We got through this into some clearing air and found a fire tower lookout to see whether there was anything else of interest around. There was some Cu over the Grampians trying to get going and the view of the line of storms now to the east of us was spectacular. The radar had nothing on it to the west so we decided to head home. Once we got to Andrew's house, we were told that a tornado had occurred in Horsham earlier in the day.  We took a few photos. A very successful afternoon and thanks to Andrew for driving.