Storm Spotters Australia

My son caught this as I almost lost my phone it was that close!! (5/01/14) in Ardlethan NSW.

Mark-SSA

Here's a 50 second video documenting yesterdays storm chase to Taralga/ Golspie.

This covers most of our chase and includes photogenic storm structure, nice lightning and thunder, small hail, a nice sunset,and also some distant sunset lightning from the Canberra storm in the evening.

It was a decent chase for Chris and myself. Plenty of frustrating moments thanks to lack of road options and mobile coverage but some fantastic moments as well.

Chase Synopsis - 02/01/15
This day proved to be a frustrating and rewarding chase but this was always a risk with little wind shear and no upper level support. Myself and Michael Keene got on the first storm of the day for us which developed west of Goulburn this produced two separate defined little funnel clouds before splitting in to two cells, we decided to go after the strong look cell more to the north west which was heading toward Taralga.

02/01/15
This day proved to be a frustrating and rewarding chase but this was always a risk with little wind shear and no upper level support. Myself and Michael got on the first storm of the day for us which developed west of Goulburn this produced two separate defined little funnel clouds before splitting in to two cells, we decided to go after the strong look cell more to the north west which was heading toward Taralga.

Happy New Year! 01/01/15

It's New Years Day and as some of us were catching up on missed sleep, hangovers and the rest mother nature is working on a different plan one which sparked my interests around 5:30pm this afternoon... I was off in pursuit of a gut feeling that as a rather weak southerly change was making it's way up the coast a thunderstorm might be a result.

What are they?

Tropical cyclones are formed over the ocean in the areas around the equator, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, and in order for a cyclone to form, the ocean waters need to be warm, at least 26C. Above the warm ocean, water will evaporate and form clouds (see our post on clouds) If there is a low pressure area where the clouds are formed, it pulls the clouds in and they begin to rotate, it is the Earth's rotation and spinning on its axis that causes the cyclone's clouds to rotate, clouds will continue to form and begin to spin more.

2014 Has been one of the better seasons and also over time SSA has built up the arsenal of equipment we can bring you our experience on.

A review of 2014 isn't far away! 2014 still continues to surprise.

Today was a very difficult chase day with storms in places where they were unlikely. Due to the holidays and moving at 40km/h along the Princes Hwy I decided to take gamble and role the dice and headed west out towards Nerriga. I was greeted with some ok activity just to the SW of Braidwood and so on I drove.

I had a small storm chase today.

Storm 1 was my best of the day( pictured below) It was the storm that initiated near Marulen and moved into Nowra. This storm created some distant cgs west of Nowra, I counted about a dozen of them. Thunder from the storm was constant. This storm morphed into a line of cells and became rather unphotogenic as it rapidly became an outflow mess...

A fantastic look back on one of Australia most memorable events. Written by SSA friend Jamie Duncan.

By Jamie Duncan
MELBOURNE, Dec 23 AAP - Tracy was tiny, but don't let her size fool you. She punched like a heavyweight fighter, and she knocked Darwin out cold.

Tracy was the world's smallest tropical cyclone. Her gale-force winds - not even her destructive winds - extended only 50km either side of the eye.

Earlier this afternoon on the Southern Tablelands near Wingello I experienced a rather nasty left mover storm which dumped around 60mm of rain in 30mins which resulted in some local flooding.

Evening followers, Emma has been hard at it again with the warning updates. I had a bit of a chase earlier this afternoon around the Southern Tablelands which left me feeling frustrated.

Today consisted much of the pop corn type of storm which pop up last about 15-20mins and vanish just as quick.

The storm of the day had to be in the pretty much unchaseable area of Arulan NSW. 62mm of rain fell in just 30 minutes and I would put that storm down as a possible super cell.

Lightning is an electric current within a thundercloud in the sky. Many small bits of ice bump into one another as they move around in the air and all of these collisions create an electrical charge, which then causes the clouds to fill up with these electrical charges, the positive charges form at the top of the cloud and the negative at the bottom, and seeing as opposites attract it causes a positive charge to build up on the ground beneath the cloud.

Well as Chris mentioned last night I went storm chasing to the far South Coast last night.

I anticipated a lightning show with a vigorous southern ocean front approaching the region.

Here's a photo before I raced closer to the storm. The storm was so incredibly active with non stop flashing. I will also post a video up when I get the chance.

Michael Keene

Clouds form when warm air rises and expands and cools forming tiny droplets of water or ice crystals that settle onto dust particles in the atmosphere, the dropletes are so small (a diameter of around 100th of a milimeter), so that means each cubic metre of air will contain 100 million droplets. Clouds will either be composed of either ice or water droplets, depending on the height of the clouds and the temperature of the atmosphere, because the droplets are so small they can remain in liquid form in temps as low as -30C.