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Sydney - Sutton Forest (Bowral) - Camden - Sydney
What a day the 20th was! Chased that day and got some strong winds, hail to 6cm, constant lightning offshore at night followed by a hailstorm at home (biggest hail I have seen at my house of my 9 yrs living here, hail to 4cm and the hail was covering the ground). Fantastic!. We (Keith, myself and Shane) headed down towards Bowral, but got there about 1 hour late due to a wrong turn and getting lost in Sydney .We saw some tcu around, especially to our S. After arriving in Bowral we saw some VERY powerful convection towards Goulburn. Other stuff was looking interesting towards Sutton Forest (SW of Moss Vale). Driving towards the storm we stopped for some lightning pics and to take a timelapse, but we saw the storm was moving rapidly away from us so we corepunched it. We ran into some heavy rain from this cell that had a nice rfb, which was rotating!! Not much else in it. The other cell had caught my attention again, one to the south which had an amazing wall cloud and Shane (another chaser I was with) and I thought we saw a funnel cloud! Just watching that cell develop was amazing in itself, rock hard udrafts along a line, never seen anything like it. But yes we found a decent vantage point and Shane did a timelapse of the storm that was rotating majorly! It had a nice wall cloud that developed and was letting out decent CGs! I commented that there would probably be a waterspout reported off the Illawarra coast from this storm, and yep, there was, after it blasted through Kangaroo valley with winds around 120-130km/h winds which caused chaos to the little down, and brought down countless number of trees and powerlines, we had no chance of catching it (the front part of the storm anyway :P). A few piccys from the storm..Thanks alot to Weathernut for hosting these pics for me :)
We watched and did timelapses as a wall cloud developed and then begun rotating like mad, it was very low too! There had been a fairly unimpressive cell developing just to our SW, it had another decent RFB, but we soon noticed it was the storm off to the east backbuilding! We got a radar image from Max (thanks Max!) and headed into the cell, which had red on radar. Shortly after we came into the anvil we got 1cm hail stones, Keith (the driver) started freaking out about his car. The hail got bigger and we heard very loud clunks on the car. Keith wanted to pull over but I advised him we kept going on to find some trees to pull over. We did that and sat and watched the hail pelt down, it was breathtaking as I had never seen it anything like this hail before, it was covering the ground very quickly and we had stones to 3.5cm. It just came down for 20 minutes, nice and fun! Lots of leaves on the ground after the hail - no noticeable trees shredded though.
We headed up the road a bit onto the back end of the storm after it had cleared and there was still hail falling! We had a bit of a hailfight (it hurt) and we were surprised when this size about 3cm dropped out of the backend. A few weird shaped ones too! (pics by Shane here)
We drove down towards Bowral and along about just where Keith had wanted to pull over was hail to 6cm!!! I felt sorry for the horses in the paddocks. (2nd pic by Shane W)
We decided to head back home after that as Keith needed to go to the meeting. The traffic was awful. This made it even more difficult to get home as another cell caught our attention. This cell was letting out loads of lightning, the thing the other storms lacked! It developed a decent guster, but the lightning was the best! We were soon later hammered by winds to about 90km/h, lots of leaves being blown across the road and small twigs. Saw a couple of trees snapped in half and some small branches down too. (the last four pics are by Shane, however his camera didn't really like the contrast it seems out there!)
We drove back through storms with gusty winds through Sydney , the Sutherland area looked like it had been hit hard. A cell near the tunnel just EXPLODED around Bankstown and smashed the city full on with heavy rain, nice Cg's and a very nice guster (ruined by the buildings)
When we finally arrived home (after deadful traffic) looked at the radar, models, WZ forums etc.(7pmish) Radr showed another squall line head in from the west. It kinda died as it entered Sydney, but it dropped 4cm hail on the Blue Mountains.. Small hail reported in suburbs S of here, but not much otherwise. Got brief heavy rain at my house (some even from clear sky!) Shane and I were up at the oval observing the amazing lightshow offshore with lightning 3 times every second! A CG I saw pulsed about 10 times, it was amazing! We had no luck with the cams though. A cell to the NW caught our attention, somewhere out towards SE of Putty, this was around 11pmi. Lightning picked up majorly, The cell screamed towards us with loads of nice flashes, but hardly any visable lightning. I was scared I admitted. The time at this stage was around 11:40p.m. We ducked for cover as we saw the storm just about come over us. Winds started gusting at around 70km/h. Fat raindrops started at first, we thought thats all it'd be. We enjoyed the gusts and were just expecting lots of lightning. However, we heard a big CLUNK on the tin roof, the shelter we were under. We thinking maybe a branch fell on the roof. Then another clunk, we saw a 3cm stone land on the grass, we both screamed 'hail!!!!!!'. More loud clumps came as I saw more hail come down, it sounded like it was going to get to tennis ball size at the rate it was going. The hail just started bucketing down!!!!!!!! I stared in awe as I watched hail to around 3.5cm, and the odd 4cm stone hit the ground, as my area hadn't recieved a hailstorm like this since January 21st 1991 ! Smaller stuff followed this and it pelted down! Shane and I had trouble speaking to each other as the noise was so deafening. The hail came down for 10 mins and covered the ground for about 10 minutes, never had seen it like this. We couldn't measure the stones cause we had no ruler with us. After the storm had passed. I rushed home eager to measured some stones and see my yard covered in hail. Luckily my brother had stuck some hail in the freezer! We measured it and it was 4.1cm. (the pic below wasn't exactly measured correctly from 0cm, but it was definately 4cm!)
Called the BoM for about the 3rd time that day to report the hail, and they said it was the largest stone they had reported in Sydney for the storm. What a great feeling being in the area best hit! Radar showed a clear red core pass over my house, something which only happens about every 3 or so years. The hail took until about 2a.m to melt (2 hrs after the storm), so it took a decent time to melt for January! Hail was to 2cm in Kiama, so the storm obviously lost its hail as it moved over there.
Radar - Afternoon: Sydney 128k radar loop. Night: Newcastle radar 256k loop (Sydney radar down)
Computer models - LFTX09z , LFTX12z, CAPE09z, CAPE12z, Shear50012z, Temp50012z
