3rd Jan 2005 Storms

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This system was forecast for some time out to be an electrically active one.As time progressed confidence in the models waned as the chance of strikes appeared to degenerate. How very wrong that all turned out to be. The day started warm with increasing cloud. Just like the approach of any other front. At around 6pm the fisrt signs of the increasing instability fired up a few rumbles and light to moderate drain over the northern burbs. This first burst came no where near the southern ranges. There was a line developing over Yorke peninsula that had some potential, even so a lot of people still believed it was all pretty much over. All the signs pointed towards the end. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

All was stable supporting the belief that it was over, a few light showers were floating around when all of a sudden an SMS arrives on the phone saying simply "strikes to my SW". I wandered outside and was greeted by huge clear air strike. Hells Bells tha twas close! I flew to my vantage point on the hill to be greeted with an enormous flash just to my NW. My western horizon was also lighting up regularly. Well the arrival of a second front with an unexpected cold pool pulled the trigger and off it went. For over 4 hours to about 3.30am on the 20th it just "went off". Concentrating mainly over the northern and Adelaide plains (as usual) a line of thunderstorms gave deluging rains and hail to those in the path. The winds changed direction from NNW to the NNE as the low progressed and more storms developed east of the northern ranges. They progressed steadily towards the SE ranges hammering all in their path. Woodside was just one locale in the firing line.

ABC online news reported

"Adelaide Hills residents say hailstones as big as apples fell during last night's big storm over the city.
Woodside resident Sarah Brayshaw says her gauges show 60 millimetres fell in just a few hours.
She says her tin roof was pounded by hailstones the size of golf balls.
"We have a tin roof on our farmhouse and it was so big and the noise was just deafening," Ms Brayshaw said.
"We couldn't go outside because it would have hurt if it had fallen on you. It lasted for about three or four minutes."

The lightning tracker shows what was going on.

The synoptic also clearly shows the passing of the low.

What happened next was simply amazing. At approx 4:00am the system simply collapsed totally and withdrew to the riverland before dissapating in a very short period of time not much more than 1.5 hours. This spectacular collapse is clearly visible on both the sat loop and radar loops below. I have never seen such rapid withdrawl!!!

       

       

As a result of this collapse yet again the SE ranges and south coast missed on the rainfall. Only 6 mm at this location. As already mentioned 60 mm was reported from near Woodside. Other falls over the Adelaide plains were generally in excess of 25mm. 38mm fell in Darlington, 18mm in Coromandel Valley, 29mm in Blackwood. The list goes on! See the rain list HERE

Its not all that often that a weather event makes front page in a South Australian Newspaper. Not only did the storms get a front page mention they WERE the front page as can be seen in the image to the right. Over 4000 strikes were recorded by the BOM. Not over the top, but hey, who's complaining!!!!! While I did recieve reports from Karoonda in the mallee where a storm hit directly over top of the town, it really was the northern and Adelaide plains that got the best of this system. However despite all the lightning that was around it proved very difficult to get good photos. There was simply too much rain and a lot of the lightning was cloud based. Compounding the problem down my way was a deck of low cloud that completely blocked the view for much of the night. When the skies finally cleared of this low rubbish, the storms were out of good range. I did manage to snap a few pics which can be viewed below.

19th to 20th LIGHT SHOW IMAGES

Next morning was a scene straight out of autumn. A heavy fog clung to the valleys and light wispy cloud clung to the ranges. I cannot remember such conditions in the middle of summer to this intensity before.

The weatherzone forum of the event is worth the read.

This system was a nice surprise indeed.