Early Morning Light show and follow up hailstorms 28-09-05 to 29-09-05

Previous Page

It managed to hold together long enough for one spectacular lightshow! Pity the same could not be said of the sellicks hill radar which crapped out at just the wrong time yet again! The only radar image from the event is from the 512 loop which really lacks decent resolution. However the storm line is clearly visible on the following radar image.

Here is how it played out.....

I went to bed with the mobile by the bedside. Around 3 am I am jolted awake with an SMS announcing visible lightning. 10 minutes later and another SMS "Are you awake Timmy". Well awake I was and scouting the scene out on the front lawn. Flash, flash! Enough for me, grabbed the camera, tripod and plastic bag (for waterproofing) and its off to the hill. Rain was visible in the distance and I had barely gotten off some shots before I had to cover up the camera with the bag. It was not heavy and passed quickly but some spectacular strikes were buzzing around with regularity. It really got dangerously close to me on the hill so I was outta there, strikes so bright that images were blown completely at f8 and above! Even blowing out my vision for second or 2! The Dog was not happy I can tell ya, bumping into the tripod nervously on more than one occasion! I retreated back to the house where it rained quite heavily making getting shots difficult.

The rain cleared from time to time leaving a view of a spectacular and angry sky backlit by the glow of the city. Unfortuately for me the rain really did ruin the photgraphic part of the evening. The arival of the rain can be seen quite clearly on the grab from the weather station rain graph above.

The GPATS lightning tracker is also telling (above)

The coldpool arrives

The coldpool behind the front gave hope that the "day after the night before" was not going to be so dull either. A few light sprinkles during the day was nothing special. Around 8:30pm all that changed for me in the southern ranges. The temperature was dropping and the cold pool arrived with a blast!

The radar image tells a good story as the line of showers with embedded hail rolled across the hills. Here is a grab of what I posted on the weatherzone forum at the time

"Oh my thats heavy!! Got hail drifts blocking the gutters!!! and water is overflowing ,mixed in with ice etc, everywhere. Temp has dropped over 2 degrees in less than 4 minutes. And on and on it goes!@!@!! 4mm in just a few mins - oh here it comes again!!"

Well the temperature continued to drop and plummeted to below 5 degrees. A drop of 5 degrees in 10 minutes. Very chilly for late september! The rain graph (right) for the 24 hours shows the intensity of the deluges in the later part of the day. In total I recieved 22mm from the whole event. 6.5 from the storms and 15.5 from the cold pool that followed. A much nicer effort and much needed rain.

The imagery from Google earth is also quite interesting. Hailshower captured, view looking NW with the top of Bull Creek valley in the foreground.

IMAGES FROM THE EVENT

Many others further north and out of the influence of the rain that made my life so difficult captured some spectacular images. Of note is Rick Carmody's superb images from Whyalla. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Tim Eckert also captured some great pictures. His report can be read HERE The weatherzone forum is also worth a read.