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Wahroonga
The model runs for this day left me thinking pulsy storms. Li's were progged at around -3 with CAPE around 1000, with shear around 10kts @ 500! So I thought Central Tablelands, Illawarra escarpment and central coast hinterland for storms today. Temps and dp's were forecasted quite well! Dps 16-18c and temps 26c on the coast up to 29 in the west. This was the case. Most of the day was partly cloudy with cirrus and cumulus which limited heating. Cells got going around 1pm and were moving faster than I expected, but as they moved into the basin they died, as was the par for this season. I managed to get away from school at 3pm and the decayed storms off the ranges, still light showers in the basin intensified as they hit the Hornsby ridge and dumped a heavy shower. I thought this was a reasonably good sign for later, despite the Sydney Storm Shield being in force. Nothing occured for the next 3 and a half hours, apart from showers forming offshore but around 6:30pm cumulus and accas started developing, even an updraft with a circular base! Storms started firing on the ranges again west of Sydney and returned very strong echos. Around 7:30pm I decided to head up to the oval. I didn't know how long my new 350D batteries would last and hadn't charged them, so I was a bit nervous. It was gaining on sunset and I was greeted to frequent flashes to the west. Once it was almost dark the flashing picked up a lot, however a large gust front was hiding the CG's. I realised I needed height and went higher on the oval, and tried doing some exposure shots, which were useless. Going back and forth to the lower and higher parts of the oval I had no luck with pics, but after waiting a while on the lower part of the oval, from the higher point CG's started becoming visible, highlighting the guster also. Lightning was basically constant at this point! It was awesome! (all pics are clickable for larger size)
A suspicous lowering was also evident! It could have been a gustnado.The guster was dropping lots of lowerings, and it was also green!
Outflow winds finally picked up and thunder was getting louder and closer so I decided to head for cover. It started spitting shortly after then raining lightly-moderately, I was expecting more but as radar shows the storm split on me. Not to worry, this actually helped, as heavy rain with gusty outflow winds makes the camera stay in the bag. My main plan was to wait for the storm to pass over and get photos off to the north, but this did not happen and CG's going off to my S, the area where there was no wire to ruin photos was going off, so I decided to set my camera up, and although my focus was not perfect (practice makes perfect, my first night of CG shots tonight) I was pretty pleased with some of the photos! There were CC's, crawlers and CG's, the whole lot!
Eventually the main storm band passed off to the north after one massive CG to the S which I missed. There was the occasional crawler but it was going off to the north, but it kept raining and raining, and I was stuck under cover. It finally stopped and I went for a peek. There was constant, mainly embedded ligtning towards the Hunter with crawlers going off, but seeing as I had a miagrane I decided to head home and get some sleep. All in all a wonderful night! Very happy, and a good cure to the SDS. November has only produced 2 storms but they've both been very lightning active.
