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6th April 2010 storms, flooding and heavy rains

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It has been shockingly dry, boring and uninteresting in the southern hills weather wise with one of the driest starts in 2 decades and a nasty habit of completely missing any weather that was around. Finally on the 6th April a trough and an upper cold pool together with moist infeeds combined to give us the best rain for over 4 months and deliver what is likely the season opening rains. It started with some amazing storms on the West coast that dropped over 70,000 strikes! During the night and into the early AM of the 6th these also moved into the midnorth of SA. Rainfall was patchy at first. But early AM on the 6th it started to rain steadily as a rain band moved in from the NNW. These soon developed into some very intense cells following the coast just north of Adelaide around sunrise. The rain was torrential and left a swath of flooding in the city with amazing scenes of streets and main roads turned to rivers as up to 50mm fell in a very short time.
Would this move to my spot? It certainly tried and by the time it was all done a nice 34mm was in the gauge. Some rainfall was heavy, lots of thunder and lightning and some Decent very short heavy drops.
BUT this was an average hills fall and even Adelaide came close with 33mm and the Airport trounced us with 46mm most of which fell in less than an hour! No wonder there was significant flooding on the plains! However the standout fall was at Crafers with an incredible 75mm which simply fell from the sky in an awesome torrential deluge. Incredible!
Later int he afternoon with the passage of the trough east some incredibly intense thunderstorms developed in the usual spots with black cored beauties dumping into nomans land.

Some stats: Adelaide's rainfall in the past day has been the heaviest in three years.
H undreds of call-outs to deal with flooding and visibility at Adelaide Airport below a kilometre.
Neptune Island recorded 26 millimetres, the wettest April day in 25 years.
Meningie, 26 millimetres, the wettest day in two-and-a-half years.
My wettest day since November 2009

Some radar and other image grabs below.

My rain graph

16th April 2010 EARTHQUAKE!

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I know this is not really weather, but it deserves a mention. Around 11:30pm on Friday the 16th April we were sitting around chatting when suddenly a roar "aproached". I say approached because thats exactly what it did, it was not a sudden appearance it was an approach! In the next second it hit on the eastern side of the house and travelled along the length of the house before disappearing West/SW.
But it was the noise that was truly memorable. It was seriously awesome and sounded like a jet plane landing on the roof! Thats right the noise was UP above us and travelled from east to west along the house and was intensly loud. The ground did shake, but it did not "sway" as such, more like a high frequency vibration and unlike the noise this was all around. Our combustion heater and its 12 foot flu to the ceiling vibrated and shook rapidly like a crazy totem pole.
We ran outside (I have no idea why we did this, some ingrained get out reflex as if there was something to see??) and the birds were all squarking and the dog was running around barking. Interestingly the dog was a bit stirred up before this all started.
It was all over in around 10-15 seconds. So much so quick! But the one thing that will stick with me forever is that noise, that moving sound like a jet plane landing on our roof. Incredible!

It was widely felt from Adelaide to the south coast and beyond with a massive public response. Perhaps the craziest happenings was the huge number of facebook groups that appeared a minute after the event! It was ironically the fastest place to garner info and reports from as the mainstream press took hours to get info online. This PAGE has some fascinating reading.

The world is creaking and groaning a little at the moment it seems. From a massive volcanic dust plume in Iceland that effectively shut down all air travel in Europe to the largest tremor recorded for Kalgoorlie that was over 5 on the richter scale on the 20th April. What next we wonder?

20th April 2010 Yet more northern events

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This has been a year of northern events. And the 20th was yet another example! A cold intrusion of upper level air and a lower humid air mass triggered with instability from the tail edge of a low way south of the continent triggered the development of amazing storms from Roxby Downs to Tarlee and Williamstown. Flooding in Roxby and Andamooka as almost 40mm dumps in a very short time. With already wet ground from previous events it had nowhere to go but run in torrents. Flooding in the mid north as up to 50mm is dumped in rapid falls near Clare and local flooding across main roads near Tarlee and Williamstown. The showers and storms extended as far south as Clarendon before collapsing to nothing after dark.
As always down my way, flat lifeless skies and barely a drop of anything, even wind!. Its been a shocking start to the year for the SE ranges as event after event evaporates on approach or simply never comes anywhere near us. Winter better be something special to salvage the rot!!!

31st July 2010 Penola tornado and organised squall lines over central districts

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2010 has been one topsy turvey year. Winter was very slow to get going withs rains patchy and unpredictable and high pressure domination defining the season. Rains when (and if you got them) happened were often huge and extreme and netted me my most significant fall in a decade with 57mm almost overnight.Then the highs opened enough to let a series of fronts through and the weather went wild for 24 or so hours. 2 organised squall lines ina few hours delivered 35mm overnight for me with mixed small hail and the odd rumble of thunder and lightning associated with instability from a large cold pool of air aloft. These lines can be seen in the radar grabs below. Have not seen such decent organised lines in a VERY long time. With a long and deep uninterrupted westerly flow finally my area got what everyone else in the hills did.

 

But most impressive was a tornado with estimated winds around 180km/h that struck and devastated Penola in the states S.E. You can read about it on the adelaide now website. The satellite pic to the right shows the instability off Cape Jaffa quite evident with embedded storm cells and some inland action also. This was taken about one and a half hours before the tornado hit. Below you can see an animation of the Mt Gambier radar clearly showing the Penola cell that gave rise to the tornado.

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