Wednesday 15th of November

Chase Report

By early morning Wednesday, storms had already moved through the wide bay area, from the vicinity of Gayndah through to the coast north of Gympie and around Maryborough. Biggenden and nearby areas received golf ball hail, with some reports of cricket ball sized nearby. We left for the wide bay area about 10am. We traveled north stopping for lunch in Gympie. By this stage the leftover anvil cloud from the morning storms was just beginning to clear. A dry line was approaching the coast from the west and I expected it to produce some very severe storms later in the afternoon. Given that we were resonably early I decided to head through Biggenden to check out the damage from the morning storms before getting into position for the afternoon cells.

Travelling along the road from Maryborough to Biggenden, we found some quite extensive tree damage just west of Maryborough. The worst damage appeared to be in two 500 metre long sections a few kilometers apart. The trees fell over the road, but were cleared by the time we got there. It was most likely microburst damage. Some trees were completely snapped in half three meters up. Not many were uprooted. As we travelled towards Biggenden updrafts started going up around us, but all of them were being pushed over by the strong shear and then flattening out. After a quick stop in Biggenden we continued on towards Ban Ban Springs, where the local chaser Jules Just was watching updrafts getting going. I received a radar report north of Ban Ban Springs which indicated a strong cell developing west of Gayndah. We could see two anvils in that direction.

After a quick stop to get more batteries in Gayndah, we headed up to a lookout on a hill just above Gayndah. There were two strong cells to our west. The one to the southwest was the strongest and largest, but didn't show many features apart from and inflow band far to our south. The cell to the northwest was smaller but developed a very strong microburst which was quite visible in the valley to the west. Both cells were producing lots of CG's clear in front of them. Both seemed to be heading east. I decided it was time to head east back to Biggenden to stay in front of them. The one to the north of Gayndah was already slipping past us.

I decided to take the northern road back to Biggenden rather than go via Ban Ban Springs, as the southern cell was catching us quicky in that direction. Directly overhead there were strong updrafts and just the look of it made me think we might be in a very dangerous part of a supercell. There were hail shafts all around us and to the north a bit of a gust front. After getting a radar update and some local directions from Jules we continued along this road heading to Biggenden. She had golf ball hail at the time but thought the northern road would get me around it. However due to the road route and the motion of the storms, I ended up driving into heavy rain and hail from the northern of the two cells. The hail was about 2cm in size. The winds were quite strong and cg's were dropping everywhere around us. I tried to work out whether to turn back or continue on, but it looked like the hail shaft would be worse behind us, so we pressed on and got out of the hail a few minutes later. The heavy rain continued on an off as well with the odd stone and lots of minor flash flooding. I think some of the crossings would be underwater not long later.

We got a report from Mark and Margy who were chasing in the area and had just core punched the southern cell we had seen in Gayndah. They had some decent hail and winds in that and they believed it was a supercell. We decided to meet them in Biggenden. By the time I arrived in Biggenden the two cells seemed to have merged into one big complex. Strong updrafts were visible to the north, and based on radar we decided to head for Childers to try and get around the storms and get a good view from the north. On the way we got a few odd hail stones. Shortly along the road we stopped to get some pictures of the hail shafts and a very nice updraft and RFB to the north. We wanted to let that cross the road before we continued in case it decided to drop something nasty. There was rotating scud under it at first, but then it seemed to become more outflow oriented and the scud blew out and over us.

We continued under the RFB with occasional views of towering updrafts above us. It was quite a large area of RFB. After arriving in Childers we had a very dark turbulent base above us, but we started to wonder if it was RFB or just some cloud left behind. I'm not too sure, but Mark was confident it was RFB. He believed there would be gust front near Harvey Bay so we tried to get down there to see it. Not far southeast of Childers we hit very heavy rain, but didn't get any hail this time. We got clear of the rain and headed northeast to Burrum Heads. At Burrum Heads we unfortunately didn't have the view I'd expected and the cell had cleared out to sea, leaving lots of cloud behind it. Mark and Margy decided to head for home, while Luke and I decided to have dinner at the local pub before heading off.

During a roast dinner we started hearing the odd rumble from the northwest. Another cell behind the main line was producing some lightning, although we could only see the flashes from Burrum Heads due to low cloud. We headed back to Howard and finally had a clear view of crawlers and CG's. We took lots of video and stills while standing in the middle of a road at the back of town. The cell quickly moved to the east and out of view. Another cell was further to the northwest, but it was only producing infrequent lightning. There was another to the southwest, but again it only had infrequent lightning. So we decided to head home. On the way back we got a nice lightshow from several different cells crossing the road and the coast.