Part 2.
So after seeing and photographing the large Meso and Tornado I high tailed it out of there as it was heading striaght towards me. Getting back in front of it I came to the actual township of Corop, and found my way to an old walking trial on the outskirts of the dry Lakebed on the east side of the town. This was the view when I first arrived on the seen. Note the large inflow band and nice beaver tail on the left side of the pic.
At this point the storm to be becoming more outflow dominate. I have video footage of the wall cloud breaking up and pushing all the dust into the air, as well as it feeding the dust into the air. Footage to come. For now just more pictures.
.
I let the front of the storm pass over me, and got completley envoloped in the dust.
.
After this the rain started to pelt down, so back onto the road and waited for the cell to pass over. A quick little clip showing the rain from the rain foot going over me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNR37ooZpis
The back end of the cell was bubbling away quite nicely showing a lovely display of Mammatus, and another beaver tail. This was pulling moisture in from everywhere!
Closer look at the Beaver. Excuse the power pole.
Part 3
So after watching the Corop cell pass, I checked the radar to see a right a mover NE of Bendigo. I also noted another line forming up to my NE up towards Echuca. This was the view from my vantage point towards the stuff forming out over Echuca way. Huge anvil streaming back towards me.
SO I decided to head north to the Echuca line. On the way there I noticed this strange cloud formation i'm hopeing someone can help me with. It was part of the Corop cell that was dying at this point.
Managing to get infront of the cell that was intesifying on its way to Echuca, I pulled off onto a small side road to see where my next plan of attack was. The was the view I was greeted with then.
At this point it was hard to tell if the storm was heading towards me still (East) or heading more to the north. I waited it about 10min, then it became very clear that the storm was becoming very dominate on the NE side. So I rushed ahead down the road and turned to intercept. All of a sudden this thing turned mean. Was very green and Touquise looking, and Staccato Cg's were pulsing upto 10km ahead of the main complex. And these were big! 3 times I was driving down the road at around 120kph with my windows open, and I'd see a flash beside me with instantanous Crack of thunder that was so loud over the top of the road noise, it had to be within 50meter quite easily. The view I got when i rounded the corner was very impressive... it had turned into a giant Tourquise monster. The following 2 shots where taken whilst driving at 110kph, so they are a little on the blurry side sorry.
Rushing down the road another 5kms and I noticed a very well defined Wall cloud had dropped down on the right hand side of the picture just ahead of the main rain band. Pulsating twin CG's were going absolutley nutters at this point!
I found a road that headed a litle more north to my orriginal route and surged ahead another 3kms. Coming to a T intersection I got out to snap a very nice wall cloud.
At this point Jane and Clyve drove across in front of me. So nice to be caught in the middle of a chase on a lage storm, and someone with a lot more experience and know how on storms happen to turn up in the same area in the middle of nowhere. Just get that feeling that our onto something.
After this I decided to follow them around, but before we left we decided to wait it out and see what the precip was like. Clyve thinking there might be hail in there somewhere going by the colour of the sky wanted to go into the main core a bit more to find hail, not realising that it had already started to fall.
The following video shows the Hail starting to fall and then become rain envolped as it gets closer. Sorry about the quality, I took a few shortcuts in the uploading process and it downgraded the quality something shocking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4K0JFIN8Nw
After this we headed out of the storm hoping it would reform however it seemed to die shortly after this. So I decided to head back to bendigo after 400km's of chasing and being awake since 4am with the stuff in the morning.
I live in a world where I dont see to believe, but I believe to see...
that was close... pull camera out and stick it out window...wait... BANG!!!!!
So another u-turn.
.
.
.
