3rd Jan 2005 Storms

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My ramblings from the time. Emotion often overrides good enunciation, so have a good laugh!

"Ah did we have an interesting day. It started at about 3:00am with some flashes and rumbles, up I got, but over before the cam hit the tripod. Morning came and bleary eyed I saw watched as it fired up real quick. Bam bam, Cg's as regular as machine gun fire. Down south from me it went with a VERY solid core of torrential rain about a KM away from us. Inpenetrable grey. Fantastic cloud structure but only a few drops or rain at home. Next wave follows soon after with more promise and broad areas of black heading straight at me. VERY lightning active with massive CG's that finally forced me into the car as they came withing the 5km mark. The rain promised much then fizzled like a luke warm fart as the lightning activity also dropped away. Another heavy and impenetrable rainshaft exploded this time within 5km north of me and again only a few drops at home. As always a total flop rainwise at home! ggrrrrr Then the AC deck set in and not until after a call from another WZ member did I wander outside to get stung by a bee to be presented with an exploding horizon. Into the faithful 4WD and off we go, northbound. Looked very threatening as we drove up the onkaparinga "highway". The spots of rain started at Mt Torrens. Off towards Tungkillo and around a bend and flashing lights. Hello whats going on here? A policeman warns me to be careful of a big tree fallen over the road and being cleaned up by the CFS. OK one tree was an exaggeration! Hells bells it was chaos, trees down, branches snapped, a line of destruction 200 metres wide and extending off on either side of the road! Must have been a hell of a guster that ripped its path thru there. Soon after the rain started. It rained as we headed into Mt Pleasant, it rained into Walkers Flat, it rained into Copeville, crap, it rained its damn guts out. Heavy too with minor flooding across many road low points, particularly Walkers Flat. For 2 hours as we drove it rained, flashed lightning and rumbled. Bloody fantastic!!! It also rained particularly hard as I attempted to get some diesel amongst electricity dropouts at Walkers Flat. Funny how it eased when I had finished.. geeze. Time to leave Copeville as the storm line heads east still deluging and flashing away, just time to catch a curry at the Bridge before arriving home to a fog and to find we had been truly blessed with a monumental fall of a further 0.25mm and a total for the day of 1.75mm. $hit, that much rain is downright dangerous, luck I have drains about the place.. "

While that was my take on the day, others experienced deluging rains, dust storms and lightning shows. The WZ forum from the day is a good read also.

The following amazing images were taken by Ben (seaworthy on the WZ forums) near Gawler on the Northern Adelaide plains.

Images © Ben Stevens 2005 and used with permission.

Later that evening after the storms had past a line of heavy rain and strong winds buffeted us for most of the night. It was more like a stormy winters evening than the middle of summer! 17mm in total for us from the system, 1.75 from the morning storms and the rest later that night. Karoonda in the Mallee received an inch and a half of rain from that band I followed from Mt Pleasant to Copeville.

The following are link is to some of the pics I captured from the day.

IMAGES OF THE EVENT