Tuesday 15th of November 2005

Chase Report

I began my chase today at around 2:00pm, as the first cell was reaching Caboolture. I crossed in front across of that cell and headed west to Wamuran, but that all that was there was heavy rain. Returning to Old Gympie Road I headed north in an attempt to get ahead of the cell and get a good view. The cell had a decent gust front and very heavy rain directly behind it. Lightning was very frequent, but of course not where I was pointing the camera. Heading north there weren't very many good locations to take photos from due to the huge number of trees in the area.

Eventually rejoining Beerburrum Road at Elimbah, I continued to head north till the Glasshouse Mountains. I then followed the tourist drive around between Mt Tibrogargan and Mt Beerwah. Heading along this road towards the west I suddenly saw a solid wall of water ahead. In the space of about 1 metre it went from no rain to 100mm/h incredibly heavy rain. Unfortunately I wasn't shooting video when this happened. Turning back towards the north on Old Gympie Road again I got out of the rain and had a great view of a large amount of scud cloud being sucked up into the gust front to the west. There were two distinct sections to the storm, one directly behind me and extending to the coast was just a thick blanket of heavy rain, and to the western side a large updraft sucking scud cloud into the RFB. You can see some of that in the video. There also appeared to be some rotation in the scud, but the video of this was overexposed so it's not visible.

After stopping briefly at the Mt Beerwah Road intersection to shoot some video, I continued to Landsborough, arriving only just ahead of the cell. There were many clear air CG's ahead and behind of me. After arriving in Landsborough I stopped at the sports field which seemed to be offer the best views available in the area. The winds seemed at treetop level were moving very large gum trees quite strongly, and there was a lot of small branches and bark on the ground. At ground level however the winds weren't very strong.

Just before the cell reached Landsborough I left and headed to Buderim to try to get a better overall view of the storm. From here I was well clear of the rain. While most streets in Buderim have decent views, they're rather tree and house lined, so you can't get a good wide angle view. It seemed though that the worst of the cell was to the West of the highway, moving along the mountains still. Maybe this was due to some local terrain effects? From a point on the western side of the highway I got some good video and pictures of the scud being sucked into the cloud base. No rotation was evident this time though. CG's seemed to have decreased in frequency as well, although there was still much noise on the AM radio. At this point I decided against continuing to follow the cell and drove through the cell southbound on the Bruce Highway. The rain was heavy in places but I didn't encounter any hail. Returning to Redcliffe the back of the cell wasn't all that photogenic. I got back to Redcliffe at 4:30pm.