Thunder
Downunder 2000!
Back to Thunder Downunder 2000 Chase Reports
Most of us were up fairly early, just after 6am. Greg went to do his yoga exercises while Macca and I decided to go for a walk down to the creek in the park. Matt however was still asleep, and when asked if he wanted to come – we were met with a pillow in the head (almost) and assumed that his answer was no! We decided to head west out towards Cobar where the rain band was clearing in the hope that some storms would form. It wasn’t looking like a terrific day, but it did show some promise. The sky was clearing towards Trangie, and CJs were popping up to the west. They looked very promising indeed! We continued onto Cobar and got there around midday. We decided that we still had some time and got a bite to eat at the local fast food shop, before going off and finding the BoM observation office. We met up with one of the guys there, he remembered Matt from the year before and allowed us to have a look at some of the charts and models, as well as the thunderstorm probability charts. They showed a chance of thunderstorms in our area according to the BoM. We thanked him and asked for a lookout, he suggested a small hill just south of the town. We followed his directions and sure enough came to find the hill – this is where the most surprising event came! A very well descended tornado shape lowering was underneath a CJ to the west while we were driving up. I slammed on the brakes and we got out and videoed/photographed quickly before it dissipated.
Upon further inspection of the video it could be seen that there was indeed a circulation and was most definitely a tornado!!!
Certainly not the type of day you’d expect to see one anyway. We sat on top of the hill for a couple of hours and watched. There was some static on radio but it was only distant. We watched showers pulse with some nice little rain feet and lowerings. We also watched an eagle’s nest and eagle just on the side of the hill – was quite interesting! As afternoon was coming, we decided to book a cabin for a night and call it a day. We went to a roadhouse for a nice steak, before going back to the cabin again and watching some real (QLD) storm footage! Report by Anthony Cornelius & Andrew McDonald, all captures by Andrew McDonald |
