Damn, John! Another beauty! How do you manage to find yourself parked in front of so many awesomely structure storms?

Agreed, greet pic - isn't that the second time you have had fuel issues? or am I thinking of somebody else.

Michael - also saw the massive GFS downgrade - probably the most dramatic I have seen.

Anyone for tiddly winks?

Okay I have a video from the Goulburn Christmas Day storm, and the Ulladulla Boxing day storm.

Goulburn and Ulladulla storms

This should go in another thread, but i've also uploaded video from me ozthunders and Grinches chase to Bathurst/ Parkes a few weeks ago.

Bathurst/ Parkes storms

The will to make every effort to chase storms, not having any better half to worry about, and a pretty good appreciation for the physics of the atmosphere . Position and reading the sky is everything. Oh and then the simple matter of shooting it.

And MT, nah, havent had fuel issues before, this trip was an issue mainly because it was boxing day (and not many fuel stops are open out here) and I didn't keep track of the tank well enough until it was too late (drove up from Sydney).

Great shot John, certainly appears to be the pick of the storms so far... i reckon the 2nd line from wagga in its early stages would have been outrageously photogenic, looked great on radar, just couldn't hold on for us.

I reckon i would have taken the northerly option with Shane had i been less sleep deprived.... i must confess that i am the new proud owner of a xbox 360 and Skyrim (aka a nice surprise from my lovely lady)..... so i burnt the candle a little too brightly at both ends the night before;)

Anywhoo, here's some pics from the 24th.... am currently editing the footage, am still a novice in this area.

I picked south on this day because the sheer would be far greater than anything further north. I expected at some point that with the 30knot westerlies at 500hPa, if a easterly low level SBF were to form that anything coming up from the south would get quickly organised which proved to be the case. This area is responsible for many left movers that have produced the goods in the past.

(Vid Screen grab) - this was taken as i was driving south just outside Cooma, heading towards an approaching string of developing cells at 2:10pm. The base (ahead) became the dominant HP storm later on.



As the storm passed into my easterly view at around 2:30-pm the main up draught (centred) started to corkscrew quite nicely. I started to get easterly surface winds and i knew the cell would start to get organised quickly with the westerly winds aloft. The top of the updraught was obscured at this point. In the distant east another cell starts to become a HP. I was getting positive strikes all around me... all except one evaded my vid angle of view.


This Video screen grab was the first and only wall cloud that i saw at around 2:35pm, positioned right on the westerly flanking position, in the junction of the updraught/ downdraught. Initially i thought it to be an outflow feature, however the time-lapse since has clouded the issue for me.... excuse the pun, so i'm leaning towards it being a wall cloud at this stage.


Another video screen grab - a short lived funnel, initially horizontal but then it was drawn up into the updraught on the left causing it to got vertical for 20 secs. The outflow/ inflow surrounding the wall cloud is better seen on the time-lapse which i'll share later.



After going back and forths with the time-lapse, this is a wind breakdown during the wall cloud/ funnel phase, which i think was when the storm was transitioning from LP to HP at 3:40 or so. The radar sequence shows the storm starting to veer left of the mean flow of the area.



By 4pm, the storm had now become a HP, with hail shafts starting to become the main feature. It's my suspicion that any meso would had been impossible to see, completely embedded in hail and rain. So if any additional wall clouds formed, then it would have been impossible to see.

Even when the storm went into HP mode, an easterly inflow feed was visible on the back end.



One of the positive strikes caught on video

I never see anything like that here in Cobar but it must of formed off went past here ? is that right guys? or am I being really blonde ?

Not sure which way this storm moved but drove between Dubbo and Gilgandra on the 28th and there was a decent swathe of (straight line) wind damage for about 5km which indicated winds of 100-120km/h likely from this storm (?). There was more minor damage (80-100km/h winds) for another 2-3km north of the main swathe.

Macca