Tuesday November 28th 2006

A dozen or so storm chasers from across Australia had converged on the Northern Rivers to chase, with strong instability present over the region. I met up with James and Macca who had driven down from Brisbane and we proceeded to Grafton. In the heat we waited, and waited, and waited, but despite hopes of a late afternoon storm, the cap held right through until dusk, when a line of lightning active cells which had develop some time earlier eventually moved into the area. The lightning was impressive right from the first bolt we could see, however it was still a little distant for our liking.

Eventually the cell heading right for our location weakened, and outflow pushed through the area. This however triggered cells to the E to take off, and a barrage of CG lightning began to take off just E of Grafton. We raced to the other side of town to get into position for photos. The show was amazing - CGs occurring every few seconds, with in cloud lightning practically constant. The storms were moving away quite quick though, so we decided to shot NE up the Pacific Highway to keep up with the show and stay out of the rain.

We arrived at Ulmarra not long after and once again set up the cameras. The lightning was great, but the CG frequency had dropped a bit from when we were driving (as usual!). We stayed in the same spot for about 3 hours, enjoying several lines of storms that passed through the area to our E. The last cell we watched was the best, with amazing, branched CGs striking with 5km of us every few seconds! It was getting quite late and the Brisbane crew had a big drive ahead of them, so we called it a night after 11pm. Please check the gallery links below for the full set of photos.

Full size photos available in Dave's Gallery on:
Page 71

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