Once I saw that trough creeping up the bay in the morning I was pretty sure it was over for the metro area. It was just a few hours too early unfortunately.
I don’t blame the BoM for being pretty bullish about storms given the values the sounding was giving, I’m assuming the trough’s weird S-shape over the state didn’t help matters for forecasters (particularly when the northern part of the trough barely seemed to move at all but the southern part of the trough was moving with some speed).
Melbourne has always required everything to come together just right for good storms. When we get these humid air masses (uncommon) we also need good heating (not so rare) and a well-timed forcing mechanism (rare). It seems to me that most “fail” days are due to the timing of the troughs/fronts - a little too early or too late and it all fizzles to nothing. Today Ringwood didn’t even get a shower (although we did get an alright light show late last night). That’s what you get for living in an oceanic, rain-shadowed climate with arid influences I suppose - we don’t have a lot of days with the kind of deep moisture required for storms, so we get relatively few rolls of the dice each year.
Oh well, if we didn’t have all these near misses we wouldn’t enjoy it as much when the atmosphere does decide to cooperate