Severe Thunderstorm Winds Hit North-West Tasmania 16/4/2000 Andrew Boskell |
| On Thursday 13th
April I was waiting for the jug to boil in the kitchen at work and discussing the weather
with a colleague. My exact words were, "it looks like the weather is building up to
something", and his reply, "a storm"?
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| The weather
that week had been rather pleasant with mild temperatures and light winds. I lot of people
were commenting on the ‘late summer’. Also I noticed that almost every day
towering cumulus were building over the sea in the morning then moving inland by noon. The
sky had the ‘light blue’ haze appearance, something I have come to associate
with an unstable atmosphere. On Saturday 15th these towering cumulus brought a
sudden afternoon shower. As the sun set it looked like a scene from a Queensland postcard
with bright orange rays streaming out from behind the towering cumulus. My wife and I went
to my parent’s place for dinner that night. I had been reading the latest Storm News
that day and was commenting to my parents, how we haven’t had any real
‘stormy’ weather for years. Little did I know what was in store!
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| The Bureau had
forecasted showers I think. I never took a great deal of notice as none of the ‘key
words’ were mentioned, such as, ‘thunderstorm’ or ‘heavy falls’.
I guess I was a little complacent, considering the stable weather we had been experiencing
for 12 months!
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| I was awoken at 1:50am on
Sunday 16th to the sound of distant thunder. Now this was not a new situation
as this had occurred in the past, but the storms always lasted about 15 mins with a few
flashes miles out to sea then it would die. So I wasn’t very enthusiastic to say the
least, but I thought I’d better take a look. The conditions were calm with light rain
falling. As I stood at the kitchen window with my glass of water I noticed the storm was
actually moving my way for once. The low scud cloud was moving in from the North. Then I
noticed a "dark mass" moving in from the West. I experienced a slight sickly
feeling for a few seconds as I pondered the prospects of what I was looking at! As this
‘mass’ moved over some bright lights about 500 metres from my house, I could see
that it was a ‘wall’ of rain. Suddenly the wall hit, I was not expecting the
violent winds that were accompanying the rain. It hit the neighbours house as if it was
blowing directly horizontal. I was a little stunned to say the least! As we watched large
trees bending over as if they were little shrubs in a moderate wind, sensor lights being
activated by the wind and lightning flashes that were so bright it blinded you for a
couple of seconds, my wife commented, "this is all your fault"! She was
referring to my earlier comments that night. The lightning was flashing at a rate of about
one flash per 10 seconds. Every now and then we would see a green flash and a sound like a
huge arc welder was in action. The power transformer near our house was arcing out on the
near by power lines. I kept saying "I should get the video camera..." but I
couldn’t pull myself away from the window!
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| All this
lasted for around 20-25 mins. The wind during the event started from a North Westerly
direction then shifted Westerly, finishing up South Westerly before ceasing. As the
storm moved away, the conditions returned to calm. It was so quite you could hear a pin
drop!
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The next day I went damage hunting. A couple of trees had been blown down in our court, one of them on a car. Some parts of Devonport had lost power. I called my parents in Latrobe to see what had happened out there. They said that they never really had that much action. But later that day they called and said that a house had lost its roof and a whole row of trees were blown down near the Mersey General Hospital on the Bass Highway. As I started to listen to people talking about the storm I realised that the damage ‘path’ was only around 5-6 km wide. Ulverstone was the hardest hit. Many houses had their roofs blown off, one roof travelled for 500m before landing on someone else’s roof! Some trees along River Road had been snapped off at the base without lifting the roots. A work colleague who lives about 10km out of Ulverstone reported that they had no wind to speak of! The damage indicates to me that the wind was in excess of 90 kph, which constitutes a "severe" storm. I have sent a report to the Bureau, but the fellow from the severe weather section is on leave until May 1, so I’m still waiting to hear some ‘official’ information.
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The storm is shown clearly on this Satellite picture as the deep red ‘cell’ situated over the central North-West Coast. Sat. Pic. Provided by Anthony Cornelius
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A Satellite Picture from NPMOC GMS-5 showing the cold front and associated low pressure system. |
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