| Claire, my sister, had
the day off school and she'd already told me that if I went chasing she wanted to come. I
rang Chris Gribben at about 1:30pm to see if he was interested in another chase and he
made his way over to my house by 2:15pm. Cu had been developing from the west since about
1pm and by this time there were a few noticeable cells which kept sending up towers into
the middle layers before falling apart. We decided to head NW in Chris's car for the best
of these cells but over the next half-hour or so it didn't do much.
By 3:30pm we had positioned ourselves in the viewing car park just near the airport. We watched this cell and two or three others continuously send up towers which died. The cell we had originally set out to chase wasn't looking all that good and a quick phone call to Jane showed this to be true. We'd been watching a cell to the NE of Melbourne get stronger so we decided to head for that.
Looking to the NE from Abbotsford
Looking NNE from Kilsyth
Upon making this decision, the cell that we had originally been watching (which was now directly overhead) had started raining on us. Only very light rain but pretty big drops (50c piece). Still didn't seem like much was going to happen so we headed for the other cell, which we thought to be over Kinglake. We got about 10km up the road and saw that the cell we'd been watching and sitting under had finally got itself organised and had a nice precipitation curtain. This was at 4:20pm. It was hard to tell what the cell was doing from right underneath so it was nice to get an indication of intensification.
Photos - Andrew McDonald
We drove in a wide arc around the back of this rain curtain to avoid the heaviest rain and soon we were sitting about 3km away from it on the NW flank. Still driving closer we saw CG's on the back side of the rain curtain and small bits of scud forming on the NW flank (RFB) White streaks in the rain curtain indicated possible hail. We were at a place called Bolinda at the time with the cell to our E now as we used some creative guesswork with the road network to try to get ourselves on the SW flank. I rang Jane to tell her of our location and she informed us (to our great delight) that the cell had just gone >100mm/h. Back building to the NW, I identified this as a multi-cell storm which took on textbook characteristics. Our choice of roads was good as we soon found ourselves on the SW flank with a road pointing directly E beside it. From here we could drive alongside the main updraught while watching it back build to the NW along the clearly visible flanking line. At 5:17pm I saw what could possibly have been a funnel. It was now over an hour since the cell got going. Also noticed another cell to our W (behind us about 40-50km away) which had a huge anvil that blocked out the sun. Rang Jane again from the service station on the Hume Highway at Donnybrook and we were informed that the cell to the W was glaciating so we continued on our cell. Chris filled up with petrol and we continued chasing - at this stage the storm was almost above us with light rain falling on us and heavier rain just to the N of us. Unfortunately our road had run out and we had to go N into the rain before finding another road that pointed E. We drove into some heavy rain before we could turn off the highway but this gave us a great view of the edge of the rain band. We went into the town of Wallan which had just copped a direct hit from this cell and we saw minor flash flooding and out flow winds were about 30-40km/h.
We stayed here for a few minutes before continuing E towards Wallan East. This road took us over the highway giving us another view of the rain curtain which had taken on a microburst appearance. We wanted to continue following closely but we were sitting under the main updraught (a bit close) so we stopped twice before turning onto the Whittlesea - Wallan road. We got 20 metres along this road (again heading E in light rain) and Claire saw hail on the sides of the road. Chris stopped and we jumped out to see hail about the size of 10 cent pieces on the ground. This was at 6:02pm - two hours after the storm began. We continued along the Wallan-Whittlesea road but quickly caught the heavy rain and flash flooding on the road was getting dangerous. Water rushing off driveways and covering much of the road with 2 - 3 inches of water and mud and hail too. Trees on this road had been stripped by the hail with leaf debris littering the road. Chris sensibly decided he didn't want to drive in these conditions so we headed back to Wallan and took photos of the hail. We then headed up to Heathcote Junction and found a hill to watch the storm from. While sitting up on the hill we saw a second cell to our N, about 25-30km away. We had to choose whether to go to Whittlesea along the back of the storm that we'd been chasing or head towards Seymour to chase the new cell to our N. We waited until 18:30pm before we decided to head for Whittlesea the Kinglake and that way we could change our minds if necessary and head for Seymour from Kinglake. On the Wallan - Whittlesea road the flooding had subsided but it was interesting to see the rivers of water running down the sides of hills and down the side of the road (2-3metres wide). There wasn't much to see in the way of clouds between Wallan and Kinglake as the roads go through forests making it tough to see the sky. At Kinglake we decided to head for Seymour because the other cell we'd been following was dissipating quickly. The view opened up a bit between Kinglake and Trawool and we saw a huge fresh updraft from the cell to the N. It was still probably 30km away. In the next 30 mins or so this cell also dissipated, as had been the case on previous days as the sun went down. We decided to head home just as we entered the huge township of Trawool (population of 17). This was at about 7:30pm. Trawool was very wet and about 1km out of town the trees had been stripped again - this time more severely. Chris pulled over and we jumped out to see large hail sitting on the sides of the road. We wandered around for 10 minutes picking up plenty of golf ball-size hailstones (biggest I've ever seen). We took photos of the hail and then continued along the road towards Tallarook.
We noticed a few locals from a farm were out looking at the hail and flash flooding. It was interesting that the temperature here was no more than about 10 C (if that). Some of the hills looked like snowfields from all the hail. As we got close to Tallarook we noticed a few largish branches down along the side of the road. There was no particular pattern to this but still showed that relatively strong wind had occurred. We turned onto the Hume Highway at Tallarook and this too was covered with leaves and debris from the hail. This was the last evidence we saw of the storm except for the decaying anvil being lit up by the setting sun which looked great and was a good way to finish a pretty eventful chase.
FUNNY AND IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE Chris left his camera at home (hehehe). |
