Wednesday November 15th 2006

With one of the strongest cold fronts to actually hit this year coming through in mid November, the stage was set for a massive supercell outbreak. Shear was the strongest I have ever seen it on a potential storm day, and if storms developed there was every chance they would become tornadic. SE QLD looked best positioned for supercells so I headed up early in the morning to Brisbane to chase with Anthony and Dave. Before we left, a supercell with cricket ball hail had already caused serious damage in the Wide Bay ad Burnett district, which is amazing given it was only 9am! We headed to the Sunshine Coast, however on arrival a very dangerous storm warning was issued for a supercell which was heading straight for the Brisbane CBD. We watched this cell from our location and it looked like a monster. To our frustration, a large storm near Taroom had produced a massive anvil covering the whole of our target area, wiping out any chance of storms there. We had to race north to Maryborough to catch a complex of cells approaching that area if we were to get anything. Near Tiaro we encountered a right moving supercell, which was producing some nice CGs and exhibiting quite obvious rotation. It was moving so fast it was gone in about 5 minutes! We pressed on to Maryborough where we encountered hail up to golfball size and some great CGs. Pushing N out of the rain we encountered a 'whales mouth' type sky above us and a very weak gustfront once ahead of the storm.

We were so disappointed with what we'd seen thus far given the day's potential, so we kept heading N to Childers in the hope of catching some of the storms in that area. We met up with Macca and watched as a compact supercell developed to our NW and an earlier storm to our NE went ballistic with lightning. The show was quite spectacular, and more cells continued to develop into the evening. We all had to be back in Brisbane that night, so we called it quits around 8pm. It was a frustrating day given we missed several supercells that went over the Brisbane and Gold Coast area and we were cursing that Taroom cell the whole way home! But all in all it was still a successful day given we saw two supercells, got hailed on and received a great lightning display in the evening! Thanks to Anthony and Dave for letting me join them on the chase!

Full size photos available in Dave's Gallery on:
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