Friday 15th of December

Chase Report

On Friday 15th, several lines of severe storms developed on the Darling Downs along a trough line. These moved northeast throughout the afternoon, just missing Brisbane. They produced some damage in Toowoomba. I didn't finish work at Fernvale in the Lockyer Valley until after 4pm, but when I did right outside the customer's place I was greeted by an impressive gust front arriving on the first. I headed down the Brisbane Valley Highway to a clearing just north of Fernvale to get a good view of the gust front. There was a lot of lightning to my north, and radar showed two cells splitting near Lowood. I decided to go north.

As I crossed Wivenhoe Dam, looking out the right window a CG hit the shore of the dam not more than 300 metres from me. I could actually see the exact point it hit, with a bright orange glow there. It pulsed for nearly 5 seconds. If only I'd been pointing the camera there at the time. I turned around and crossed the dam a couple of times, but didn't see much more as the cell was rapidly going across the ranges. There was still lightning to my north so I continued on towards Esk. By the time I reached Esk, radar showed another line forming on the ranges, with an STW out against it, headed my way. It looked to me like the most severe part of the line would pass through the area between Esk and Kilcoy. Therefore I continued north to Toogoolawah. At this point I spent quite a bit of time trying to find a decent viewing point, as there are lots of trees along the Brisbane Valley Highway, making decent views fleeting. I stopped on the western side of Toogolawah for a while, but then headed north towards the D'Aguilar Highway. I started seeing some lightning to the northwest.

I stopped at Harlin as the second line was now very close with CG's dropping everywhere to my west. Unfortunately many of them seemed to be just outside my camera frame. Got a few good ones though. They were all very bright and pulsy. As it got darker the lightning seemed to get brighter, with just about every flash turning night into day for a second. At this point my camera decided to die on me, so I didn't get anything further. As the lightning started to become less frequent I headed back to Caboolture, stopping for dinner at the Caboolture Travel Centre. While there crawlers started appearing all around so that gave me a nice show for a while, before I decided to call it a night.