Sunday 25rd of December 2005

Chase Report

Storms developed around midday, starting west of Brisbane, then forming a wide band throughout South East Queensland. Some cells became severe and 3cm hail was reported west of Brisbane. The storms were quite embedded and cells were going in all directions, with not much structure visible from where I was. Due to other committments I was unable to chase until after dinner tonight, so I went down to the coast of Redcliffe after the storm had passed to take lightning photos. The sunset was spectacular and the lightning was incredible.

Unfortunately with the gear I use I wasn't able to capture the best of the lightning. I lost quite a lot of time downloading images to the laptop when my card was full. I did however get some good crawlers and cloud-to-ground strikes on video. I will process these and upload later. As the cells moved further away we went to Scarborough and I took further video and stills from there. There appeared to be three main cells. Lightning was firing at a rate of about 20-30 flashes per minute for over two hours in total. All in all quite an incredible display.