Friday 6th of January 2006

Chase Report

Friday had an interesting setup with a band of good instability and moisture along the coast of South East Queensland and North East New South Wales. Shear was reasonable with steering winds towards the ENE. I wasn't able to travel far on my chase, but just stayed around the Redcliffe area. Despite this I still had a great day with good views of several different cells including one that may have been a supercell. In the evening there was an incredible lightning show, with 13000 strikes in 4 hours.

After cells which had persisted from the previous evening had cleared to sea, there was nothing around much. The strong cap was suppressing any development, but at 3pm a cell appeared on radar near Highvale. Another one was at Toogoolawah. I decided to drive down to the hill above North Lakes Shopping Centre in Mango Hill to get a better view. On the way down the cell near Highvale was very narrow, but had a strong updraft and large precipitation cascade in front of it. The cell near Toogoolawah looked more impressive but hardly any structure or detail was visible through the haze. Shortly after I arrived at my vantage point the cell to my west died and just remained as anvil with light rain. After watching the other cell to the north briefly I decided to head back home and see what else would happen.

After dinner there were some nice cells around. One rather dark one to the west of Redcliffe and another sunset illuminated cell to the north, around Maleny. I decided to head to the boatyard carpark at the top of Scarborough to take some photos. Although it wasn't evident at the time, by flicking between some of the photos I took of the Maleny cell at around or after 6:30pm you can see some evidence of a counterclockwise rotation in the cell. When I first arrived the updrafts were quite strong, but they diminished over time as the cell died. The sunset produced quite amazing colours on the Maleny cell and also the cloud overhead me. I had hoped the Maleny cell would produce lightning after dark, but it seemed to be totally dead.

By this time some flashes of lightning began to become evident from the cells to the south. This cell had formed near Kyogle earlier in the afternoon and had slowly been moving north. Other updrafts formed around it and it seems to have become a multicell complex as it moved up the coast. The main movement of cells was east, but the whole complex moved north with new cells forming west of the line all the way up the coast. I drove from the top of Scarborough to a park at Clontarf where I had a good view looking across Bramble Bay. Unfortunately low cloud blocked the best viewing, but lots of flashes were visible. The lightning was strobing continuously, but only occasionally were any lightning strokes actually visible. There were a few crawlers and CG's but mostly it was just strobing. Most of the lightning activity seemed to have moved into the bay so I went around to Scott's Point and took more photos from there before low cloud block my view. Then suddenly rain started at my location. Fortunately I got the camera in before it got too wet. This cell hadn't been visible and radar shows it actually formed right on top of Redcliffe. The rain was quite heavy for a while. The lightning strobing continued and was now all over the place not just to the east.

I decided to head towards the west side of the city to try to get clear of the rain and get a better view. The rain seemed to clear behind me, and all the lightning visible was back behind me at Redcliffe, so after a little while I headed back via the Bruce Highway and Anzac Avenue. The lightning illuminated the base quite well and some interesting features were visible to the east. It appeared to be a massive rear flank updraft over Woody Point, but I'm not sure. I hit the rain again around the Mango Hill area, with the lightning still strobing. Didn't see many CG's but did get one good one on the way along Anzac Avenue. It had a green afterglow to it and had the lights out for a little while before the came back on. I continued up Deception Bay road to see if there would be any more close strikes. There wasn't, but along Bay Avenue I had to drive through half a foot of water across the road. There was a lot of flash flooding around that night. The activity seemed to be continuing north so I decided to head home and call it an evening. The rumbles and flashes continued long into the night.