Yet another upper level low was moving northwards, and storms were once again on the cards for Thursday the 17th of May!  Certainly May had been quite active, and there was no let up on that!  The main cold air sat in NSW for this day, but it pushed an upper level trough into Queensland.  The result of this was a very strong jetstream (120-130kn from the NW!)  And a good mid level jet (50-60kn), with a slightly slacker low level jet (20kn), but it was still sufficient shearing in a low CAPE (1000-1500) situation to produce interesting and potentially severe thunderstorms!  However, I knew that any storms that formed would move fast � so there was no room for mistakes in this chase!

Perhaps my first mistake of the day, was choosing not to fill up before uni started in Toowoomba and coming in five minutes late.  If I had just done this, I would have had a much more interesting set of events unfold!  However, it still was a fairly enjoyable chase!

I was somewhat dismayed and concerned when a band of weak storm activity formed over the Downs late on Wednesday night and moved towards us.  It weakened before it got here, but as it went through Oakey and Toowoomba both went SW�ly, and I feared it was the main trough that triggered it.  However, Oakey and Toowoomba both back went to NE�ly after that � I heaved a sigh of relief!  I woke up in the morning and saw that the winds were generally NW�ly � it meant the trough was close, but both Toowoomba and Oakey were registering NW�lies with DP�s around 12-13, so it was still a little distance away.  While driving to uni in Toowoomba, I noticed lots of ACCAS � all to the north!  To the south was cleared!  My first thoughts were �Dam!  It�s all going to be north of us!�  But I then remembered that the steering flow was from the NW � and for me, coming back from Toowoomba in the afternoon, my best chance of storms were storms forming to the north over the Brisbane Valley and then moving SE across the highway for an intercept!

I finished uni at 2pm, I could see some development just to my north towards Crows Nest.  My car was conveniently parked right next to the computer labs, and I ducked in there to have a quick look at what was on radar.  Some cells in the yellow and green were just to the east of Crows Nest, moving SE fairly quickly!  I estimated a rendevous point just east of Gatton � plenty of time I thought!  I had 60km to travel, the storms had 70-80km to travel.  I thought I�d have enough time to quickly fill up at Gatton. 

At the Gatton bypass I took some footage of the storms, they were low but they looked quite well organised!  It was here that I soon realised that these storms were absolutely flying � even at speed, I knew that I�d end up sitting behind the storms � which wasn�t where I wanted to be!  While filling up fuel, I could hear nice rumbles of thunder � I felt like the hare and the rabbit, I had thought I�d be able to get to the destination quickly � and had I not stopped, I would have made it!

I pulled out of the College View servo just outside of Gatton, while trying to gain speed quickly to merge onto the highway I noticed a very significant protrusion!  �Funnel!!!�  I thought to myself � the car sat in 3rd gear revving high as I tried to turn the video camera on, before finally relieving the car of its stress as it got whacked into fifth.  The funnel was slowly weakening and ascending, but it had scud forming underneath it � which at the time, made it look quite low.  Eventually the funnel dissipated, and I continued eastwards. 
 
 

Near Marburg, I turned off the highway, a new storm was developing rapidly and was already precipitating heavily!.  I was really hoping for hail � knowing the roadwork would be a difficult one after this, I pulled over for a minute.  It didn�t take long for the storm to move over � the winds were gusty, but nothing major.  Then came the hail!  But it didn�t last very long!  Only twenty seconds at most � it was quite heavy for a brief moment, before it moved on. 

I headed SE, trying to keep through it, going through Marburg to Rosewood.  It was a challenging drive � that little area is quite hilly, and obviously the storm had dumped torrential rain � the roads had water gushing over them!  Every so often, I got caught up in the back part of the storm, with torrential rain and small hail again!  Because the storm had already moved over the area, there was lots of water over the roads.  It was one of those times you wish there was an �auto-no-aqua-plane� button on the dash!  This made it very difficult to keep up with � perhaps the other mistake was stopping again for a couple of minutes � but I wasn�t to know what I would stumble across in the next twenty minutes or so!

What really got my interest though, was going through Rosewood.  It�s a town I often travel through to visit my parents when I�m driving from Brisbane � and it doesn�t tend to flood easily.  But all of the storm water drains were totally full!  Gushing like anything � this mightn�t seem unusual at first, after all � the storm had only just passed several minutes before.  But the storm was moving so quickly, I didn�t think there�d be any chance of high rainfall totals!

I bypassed Amberly and headed south.  I had wondered if I would catch up to the storm again, as it was soon going to go over the ranges to the south of Ipswich � and no roads go through there!  While pondering this, I noticed a tree down by the side of the road �that�s interesting,� I thought.  Then I saw another, and another � dozens of trees!  Then I saw the fog up ahead, and the sides of the roads suddenly went completely white!  Nice hail drifts had caused very thick fog!  I pulled onto a side road to take some video and phone the BoM about the hail drifts and all of the trees down!  All the trees were leaning in the same direction � even the grass was flattened.  I knew that there was no chance in catching this storm, so I pottered around and had fun with the hail � there were hail drifts up to a foot deep!  I was impressed, especially given the fast movement of the storm. 

I saw a few nice rainbows to the south � and I looked around for more damage � it was getting annoying constantly pushing branches off the roads � so I stopped doing that eventually!  I caught a quick glimpse of the storm to the north, it looked interesting (I don�t know if there was, but it did look like it had some sort of rotation).

There was yet another line of storms to the north though!  They were going to go through Ipswich, or just to the east � as informed by Dr Pearce.  Being close to winter, nightime fell quite early and I was only able to judge where the storms were by estimating where the most frequent lightning was!  I wanted to get close enough to find a park and take some video of some lightning, as there was a fair bit of light precipitation around which meant that some of the bolts would be hidden.  I went through Ipswich, the traffic wasn�t too bad thankfully!  I came out on Brisbane Rd, the storm was just to my north and it was going to pass just east of Ipswich � but in the most inconvenient place as far as finding a place to sit and take video!  However that didn�t end up happening, I caught the edge of the storm on Brisbane Rd, several kilometres before it becomes the M2.  The rain started off as torrential at first, with visibility greatly reduced!  Then came the white-out areas!  Times when you couldn�t see the bonnet of my car, let alone the road!  This was exacerbated by the squally winds that were coming into the direction of the car.  The road came to a crawl at about 10-20km/h, and nearly at a standstill at times!  There was no way I�d get ahead of the storm, or into any decent part of the storm!  I wasn�t expecting such extreme precipitation from an evening winter-type thunderstorm!  The right lane soon became filled with water, and even when the rain eased off a tad the water over the road was dangerous.  Perhaps more dangerous then one moron thought � as they flew past me to overtake in the right lane, I�m not sure what happened � I�m assuming the right side of the car aqua-planed while the left kept traction, and they spun out!  Fortunately I was only doing a little over 40 at the time, and was able to veer off into the parking lane, as the back of their car swung into my lane!  Unbelievable � it left me a bit shaken, the lack of common sense by some people at times leaves be bewildered!

I soon got onto the M2, the M2 was jammed from the Warrego and Cunningham Hwy entries, all the way to the M4 turnoff.  From the M4, I got ahead of the storm, and then got home in time for the rest of the line of storms to move over my house!  A few nice flangs, including one as I was standing outside near the entertainment area under the edge of the roof � I heard a high pitched noise for about half a second, and then I saw a bolt which appeared to strike just behind the house diagonally across from us!  I don�t know what it hit, but it was 30m away at the most!  Instantaneous high pitched (and quiet) crack of lightning also!

Well � what a day!  Who on Earth would think that it�s nearly winter, with the dry season and dreaded cold SW�lies???  Just amazing!!!