Thunder
Downunder 2000!
Back to Thunder Downunder 2000 Chase Reports
We awoke to cloudy skies of stratocu…it was a similar repeat of the morning before, Greg was up first then Macca and I decided to go for another walk. Matt was sound asleep. Of course, our walk ended up being a little longer than we had thought…if we had known we would have put shoes on rather than trying to walk on gravel/roads/around glass. We rescued a turtle that was being attacked by some dogs and placed it near the bank of the river – it was extremely muddy on the banks, so we had to place it on the bank to prevent us from going A over T. After a consultation with the Doc, we decided to head west – towards (eerie music here) – Thargomindah!!! However, wouldn’t you know it? We had never gone past the town of Eulo the day before – the Paroo River, about 500m out of town was well and truly flooded over the road by about a metre or so.
As much as many people refer to Alex (my car), as a “hovercraft” there was no way two 2WDs would be able to traverse through the water. We were stuck. But we ended up wading through the floodwaters – there was no current, and we only walked on the road. Was a bit of fun – the water was lovely and warm!
We decided to head back east of Eulo to an advantage spot. Unfortunately there was a dead kangaroo near the first one…so we moved to the other side of the wind direction. We waited there for a couple of hours, watching storms develop to the east and slowly move our way. It always seems that if you have a storm it moves too quickly, but if you don’t have a storm and you’re waiting for one to move your way that they move too slowly. One of the common Chaser Paradoxes I’m sure.
It was going to be a similar day to the one previous – a line of storms (possibly a squall line) would form first, and then potentially storms about 50-100km would develop further east. There were no roads east though in the place where storms would form, hence the westward option. We ended up getting the best of both worlds though – a squall line formed nicely, with cells forming just ahead.
We got some strong winds, probably up to 60-70km/h with very heavy rain – looking at some of the rain feet there were quite possibly stronger in other areas. The guster was very nice! Dark and bluey-purple, we were able to follow it with ease to Cunnamulla.
However, Greg and Matt got us lost in Cunnamulla (yes, how you can get lost in a town with about a dozen roads is also something I’m wondering, but it happened!). Our original aim was to get back on the Ballone Hwy. But Greg and Matt’s navigational error ended up being a blessing in disguise – we ended up going north towards Charleville. About 20km on they stopped and said “I think we’re on the wrong road” – Macca and I had decided not to say anything and see when they had noticed. It wasn’t going to matter too much, as just a minute or so when we realised that it was the wrong road, it did look like north was going to prove equally, if not more fruitful. The line was tilted NNW/SSE, so as the road went north, it went semi-parallel to the storms to the west. Also, some rather interesting storms had formed to the east and were Worthing keeping an eye on. About 50km north of Cunnamulla we stopped for a while and watched. The storm to the west was active…lightning was constant. The storm to our SE was drawing all our attention, with a beautiful backsheared anvil and updrafts.
A probable wall cloud had developed on the NW flank, and it descended what appeared to be a small funnel! But it didn’t last very long, however it made up for it with some spectacular CGs.
I had never witnessed so many anvil-ground CGs before, the CGs were coming from the anvil, and striking out about 10-30km at times away from the storm! Incredible! Macca did a good job to get it on tape, and Matt got a fantastic shot of the backsheared anvil. We witnessed CGs to the west too…and eventually the Sun come out overhead.
It was as black as the ace of spades to the NW, the brilliant contrast between the sunlit green fields and the black storm made for a great little photo.
Unfortunately the storms to our S were starting to block the view to the possible supercell to the SE. We went north a bit more, it was coming on sunset. We had a great rainbow to the north in a pinky-type background. To top if off, it was a double rainbow, and as we pulled up a brilliant CG struck through the middle of the double rainbow!!! I was looking through my camera when I saw it, poised to take a photo. Had I got the shot, it would have been the shot of a lifetime! But unfortunately I wasn’t expecting it. It gave a good crack of thunder about 10 seconds later.
We decided to keep going north towards Charleville as it would put us into position for the following day, we needed to get towards the eastern Maranoa and western Downs region as the trough was going to go from nearly stationary to accelerating eastwards. It was slow going, we stopped again about 80km S of Charleville to watch lightning, the frogs were unbelievable! Near deafening chorus of thousands of frogs happily ribbiting away. It was 24C and 100% humidity, so they were no doubt enjoying it! Certainly a great little ‘nature experience’ though. We were lucky not to hit a kangaroo towards Charleville, as a silly roo jumped in between the cars, Greg and Matt were first and we were second…the kangaroo ended up being 10 feet in front of our car, we only narrowly avoided hitting it – a real pain at night. We arrived to a partially flooded Charleville – we were restricted in accommodation. Towns like Charleville are built on a river, and only have one or two bridges. Both had water lapping up near the road, and houses were already being flooded. Of course, the locals found this a great reason to celebrate, and there was a “flood party” being held at our of the houses that was flooded. A lot of the homes near the river though are built on stilts, so only the bottom (garage part) was flooded, the top was fine.
We tried to seek accommodation at one cabin, but they were flooded out. Western Queensland is very flat, and with a week of rain and storms, it can flood quite easily. We decided then to try and seek accommodation on the eastern, Warrego Hwy part of the river. Should it rise further, we didn’t want to be stuck on the other side! We found accommodation, and since it was towards 9pm, we just ate some food that we had on us (noodles etc) while watching the video footage of the day. Report by Anthony Cornelius & Andrew McDonald, all captures by Andrew McDonald |
