After several days of a strato cu and drizzle fest, summer looks to return from tomorrow. A trough edges into the state Tuesday and at least on EC should trigger storms from just west of Melbourne across Western parts of the state. These may meander east into Wednesday and perhaps re fire out in Gippy on Wednesday. Outside chance Monday on eastern highlands as well.

Some uncertainty beyond that as to whether the next trough will approach and then linger but if it looks good by Wednesday we can start another thread for that as it will be with the "next" high - if that makes sense.

Anyway back on topic, we have a little bit of weather to watch and a place to post for it in the next few days.

EC still reasonably keen on Tuesday PM/Even at least for the SW of the state. Wednesday looking little patchy out east. Maybe restricted to higher points.

BOM's latest 4 day chart shows the trough vacillating about central Vic for next Wed and Thurs. Would be nice if that came off.

24C here today, cool under the clouds (moreso up at Mt Dandenong where I've been for 2 days).

A bit of a cell Just over the border at Corrowa. It looks like it is moving in a SSW dirrection which is unusual but it is getting late and my eyes may be playing tricks on me.

Looks like I'll be waiting until Thursday and Friday for my chance of storm action, since I'll be returning home from holidays in Corryong and Merimbula around then. Hope something good pulls off on those two days

BOM forecast completely changes for Friday, then again I doubt it will stay that way. I must admit though with my first tennis tournament of the year starting on Friday night I hope the storms stay away from my area!

Well bit of a shock after the recent cool weather today. Although just around the 33 34 mark. Still a bit of a chance of a rumble in the west of the state tomorrow pm and in particular the SW. Nothing to serious but its there in several models, most notably EC and UKmet. Wednesday am and middle part of the day a chance around central parts and then the east later. GFS has trough lingering, particularly about the east and wrecking the date range of this thread. EC cooperates and has no weather really Thursday or Friday before developing a ripper ECL. Thursday I guess we decide what to do thread wise?? Anyhoo, stay cool.

Hi Runkle,

EC's ECL is a little beauty, isn't it? Esp when it forms an exclamation point on the far south coast of NSW. Could be interesting for East Gipps if it were to come to fruition. None of the other models support it yet, though GFS gives some support.
Bob

Ruckle ... sorry for misspelling your name. Apologies. Bob

Hee hee thats ok Thunderbib. 31.3/10 here at home.

hah Ruckle, anyway ACCESS pretty keen on some decent rainfall in the east on Saturday. Also since I can't see the ECL (only having available ACCESS and GFS) when is it developing?

Anything much coming from the west later this week? I get just a little awed when I see those beautiful white tops blowing up like marshmallows on the satellite loop.

33C here today but felt heaps hotter during the sunny breaks, esp. later in the arvo when the seabreaze shut down early. Got a mid level cloud hovering over the town and its been spitting for the last 30 mins (not enough to wet the warm concrete).

Looks like CMC's early call on an ECL forming and crabbing down the NSW coast is still on the cards (but 36 hours later than its initial Wednesday prediction. Good be quite wet in Gippsland come the weekend?

will there be any relief i wonder for Victoria SE suburbs from this heat, last night i slept really bad. i don't tend to handle the heat very well =[

hoping we will get some storms and a cool change. but maybe i am just hoping too much

*edit* spelling. goddam no sleep

I think we will see a change of sorts.
The cloud is starting to drift over from the SW and there should be the beginning of something nice for us
Tomorrow looks like it could be good for some rain (storms?) too.
Friday night looks especially interesting - into Saturday.
I'm not a fan of hot sleepless nights either. Also the heat seems to activate all the night wildlife around here
The owls have been hooting; the bats fighting in the trees; the possums stirring up the dogs and we get the odd fox snooping around.

Wouldnt be surprised to see a storm fire up in the west of central distric by 4.00am (early hours) tomorrow, then by lunch time parts of wimmera, mallee, northerm country, central district, north central district may start to fire up, then by early evening maybe some storms along the northeast ranges.
As far as rest of week, not sure if this belongs here or for another thread IMO should see storms developing, thursday northeast. Friday afternoon is looking the most intersting for much of the state for storm potential, although western districts and the wimmera may miss out.
Fergus was croaking last night, so defianetly must be the right conditions for something to develope.
Today is lovely and warm, sorry for those of you that don't like the heat, but I am loving it, kids are in the pool happy and occupied, only a week or so of summer holidays to enjoy so I say bring it on. I May even get the tinny out one evening and do some local river fishing, conditions are looking favourable.

BOM should've kept the storm forecast for Friday, I highly doubt it will stay as 'Partly cloudy'. And even if it does it'd be easier for them to leave it as is. Tricky to forecast though I guess, mind you they're having trouble forecasting most of the country atm..

Bit warmer today than yesterday aand the DP's a little higher as well 35/13 at home atm. As expected a little activity in the SW, thanks EC again.

I vote that we post in here for tomorrow as trough moves across and winds change to E or SE. Then Thursday onwards and potential lingering trough is a new thread.

If you didn't like last night , Your Going to HATE tonight .

Cloud rolled in at optimum timing for High Overnight minimum's .

Ruckle, if you continue posting we will follow for sure.

38C here today, kids are out skiing, I went for a jog before and still trying to cool down now an hour later.

The NSW ECL scenario for this week looks to wash out into the Tasman and Vic's weather changes after this thread hinge on the widescale Easterly Dip situation that will be in place over SE Aus in comming days.

Most model > 4days out are spinning up tropical lows all over the shop - the outlook hence, also will remain a dynmamic situation.

Calm, overcast and 33 C here atm - perfect waterskiing evening.

My wonderful partner cracked me up tonight. I mentioned we might get some rain and possible storms from early tomorrow (here in melbs) and she looked out the car window at the sky and said. "It'll be all sizzle and no sausage.." I'd never heard of that before but thinking she could be right.

Yep ruckle I will follow your lead. And whatever you vote for count me in. Have no idea how to start a new thread, so I will leave that to someone that is more experienced.
Watching Hewitt, on a lovelly summers evening I am so hoping for a veteran aussie to join the two youngens in the second round, hope I am not eating my words in an hours time. Not sure how warm it is there at Melbourne, but it is still very warm here at the moment and I am thinking he is a battler/stayer and may handle the warmer conditions quiet well?

Well dont have to eat my words regarding Hewitt, but I may have to eat my words on an earlier post where I suggested maybe a storm might develop in the west of central district for early hours of Wednesday morning, well I am pretty sure I got that one up the poop creek.

Change would have been handy a few hours ago. Had 20 drops at 3am and maybe a few more around 730. Belting Stherly coming up the bay now

Yep, I feel the change coming through now, might finally get some sleep tonight. Might be a stupid question but why does the DP rise when a change comes through?

Looks like a good storm exploding near Echuca.

Ant, err ... err ... Colder air has less moisture-carrying capacity, is, of course, colder ... therefore the RH is likely to be higher ... err ... err ... I'm lost. Anyone else?

It was as expected. To quote DLCAT, "It was all sizzle and no sausage." The Northeast of the state and S NSW was always going to get storms.

Our chances disappeared early. The sun was out around 9am. The storms disappeared quicker than Sam Stosur's chances of winning the Aus Open.

Was never expecting anything more than a wind change.

It was actually dlcat's fiancée but I'm glad to take the credit It was looking half promising early Monday or Sunday night but the bulk of what might have been storms went a long way south. Tasmania seemed to get some storm activity, and there were a couple of splots of lightning out over the south of the great dividing range this morning but nothing else.

I'll have a go at the DP question but happy to be corrected. This is trying to rack my mind from years back.

DP is the temperature at which the air becomes saturated and water must condense out of it. Cold air has a lower saturated vapour density, as I think does lower pressure air, so given a stable actual humidity/vapour density (same constituent proportion of water in the air before and after the change) then the temperature at which the air becomes saturated (DP) is higher if it is cooler or lower pressure after the change, and should be lower as the temperature or air pressure increases.

TheAnt - google and print out an "AIRAH PSYCHROMETIC CHART" all the temperature/humidity combinations show up nicely on that.... and buy yourself a wet/dry bulb thermometer (they are cheap and very accurate) to help you get your head around it all. This chart is normally derived for normal land pressure (1013 hPa) - DC is correct about influence due to different pressure, but most of us hobbyiests dont need to worry about that in the bigger picture of measurement error.

We managed to get to 34C here today before a strong westerly took over dropping temps closer to 30 C. A dry change (if you discount a few drops on the way to work early this morning).

Frog is going off. I guess somewhere in the state will get some action. Noticed a thunderstorm warning on the BOM. Doesn't look like we will get anything, and I think any chances of a storm here have passed, it did look promising at about 4.00pm. Rather warm still and a little muggy here.

So driving home from work, I could see a featureless RFB and didnt really think to much of it, thinking it was just mid level junk trying to trick me. However the closer I got to home the more defined it became and some rotation was begging to become evident.

This is as I got home...


I decided against heading out, as it was passing right in front of my front yard, and rather than contend with traffic I decided to "let this one go" by me.
Suddenly Cg's starting pounding the earth underneath the RFB and a clear slot was opening at the back. Decided to try my hand at the lightning trigger. Only managed one more cg before it stopped, and it tricked me as to where it would be.... Stupid me forgot to set focus to infinity in my haste, so its stuck on the house leaving the bolt blurry.


A couple min later and I was getting hit with the edge of the RFD, and noticed a fairly solid rotation in a small updraught on the back of the clear slot.


3min later it roped out into a small funnel that was evident for around 5 min.... (Centre of picture)


And then a couple of shots of the back end of her, Her more beautiful side. The front may have been featureless, but the back was blooming nice!

.


So not bad for a front porch "chase". Haha

Gorgeous

Great structure shots Rickii - and fanstastic commentary to complement them. Lightning shot was a ripper anyhow.

Great learning for many of us looking and reading your posts!

Superb Rikki! An inspiration.

Gotta love the back of a storm with a bit of sun on it! And thinking back to Xmas day, really can recommend the porch chase!

Quite a number of tight little cells have moved around us here this afternoon (mainly to our north on the southern slopes of the Divide) but, frustratingly, providing nothing but some distant rumbles. I'd guess a few fires will pop up in the morning as I don't think, in all cases, there was a lot of rain getting to ground.

Great shots Rikki, as always.
We still have a trough passing through Vic, do we need to extend this thread or make a new one?

Clear skies here and temperature outside are starting to rise, the sun already has a real bight to it, and could potentially make things very cynder dry by this afternoon. Chance of thunderstorms forecast for this area this afternoon and this evening Of particular interest storms forecast in the Northeast ranges, with what looks like not a lot of rain to follow less then 1mm for today and tomorrow. Mind you stormcast is not looking that interesting for storms.
My partner was talking to one of our clients who had a fire on there property the other week that had started in a bush paddock from a lightening strike (days previous). So lets hope any storms are accompanied with heavy rain. Mind you my parents property in Warrenbayne went up in smoke when I was a little tacker from a lightening strike nearly a week after a thunderstorm, due to the roots of a gumma smouldering under ground. Storms with very little rain and a warm week to follow in 30C's we probably could do with out.
Funny how each year is different, last year floods, this year back to keeping a look out for smoke.

look too dry no clouds at all so how we get storms i cant find trough line any where in SE Australia...
Hope heat rise cloud

I can see out to the east lot of cumulus in the North East along the ranges.
Thermometer outside under the verandah is sitting at 38C, a bit warmer then expected, is only ment to be 35C here today. I hate to think how warm it is for those out in the sun, cause it sure has a kick in it here. Barometer has dropped from 1012 to 1009 in the last hour.

A beautiful, sunny, warm (but totally uneventful) day here in East Gippy. My prediction, yesterday, that yesterday afternoon's storms would result in fires showing up in the ranges today, has not (gladly) been accurate. Still, as Thunderunder says, they could still show up. Perhaps there was more rain with the storms than I thought.

Nobody will criticise your predictions Thunderbob, we all note them and make their own decisions.

Doesnt matter if our predictions are right or wrong, they still serve as a prompt for us all to have a look into something pending we may not have noticed (everyone busy nowadays)..... All part of the fun.

28C here today after yesterdays dry change. Getting dry now but thats summer - our Lake Glenmaggie is still 89% full so all good for the dairy farmers and tourists alike. A great summer here so far (barring one cold week 2 weeks ago). Baro steady for past 36 hrs circa 1019 hPa.