Vic - Potential showers/storms - 21st Dec to Boxing Day 2011

[SC.]

Happy Birthday apocalypse!!!

Yeah, it was great here too. Plenty of rumbles and flashes overnight and this morning.

[Meso]

Dont have too much time too post. Great shots though, Rikki! Really nice colors on those early morning shots! I decided to call it a night about 1:30am after two rounds of shooting lightning from the beach here, but could hear it rumbling away in to the early hours. A lot of electricity in the air last night.

Interesting most of the forecasts for today mention gusty winds with storms...Bendigo forecast even has specific mention of possible hail! Could be an interesting day.

[mick]

If Meso's asleep hopefully those CG's to the south of the Island woke him up, I'd go for a drive again if I had my own car

I was posting about this is on FB not long ago but a bat has managed to get into a CG shot with the outline lit up 4 times from the pulsing CG, I didn't know what it was till I zoomed in and could see the shape and remember a bat flying around.

Here's the twin CG shot and a crop to show the bats outline in 4 spots, will post more later

Great get of the Bat. Merry Xmas Everyone!

[droughtbreaker]

Merry Christmas to everyone.

We had storms rumbling away between 2am and 3am. Today still looking very active. I haven't actually checked the gauge yet out of laziness but there will be a few mm in there.

[thunderhead]

Love the Bat shot, Steve - the proverbial "bat outa hell!"

[Supercellimpact]

Now I have seen 2 storms the first was at 9.30pm last night with frequent cg's and cc's.


Well what a night. I was woken by a storm at 3.30am, so I decided to get up and have a look out the window and to the immediate SE was frequent cg's with loud booming thunder.

Today looks great with storms around already so could be an amazing day !

[TheFishmanAU]

Well it certainly erupted....cant remember a night like that where we had so much thunder, was almost non stop.

Merry Xmas all, have a great day and hopefully another round of action.

I had 5 rounds of this, it was intense. 4 direct hits. I haven't had this for 30 years. I remember a night in late 1981, when I was 13.

Now is when the expectation will hurt, when we don't get another one like that. We know it is possible to get a storm like that.

[windyrob]

Well here are a few from yesterday
Firstly a side on shot of that nuke behind the dandenongs from yarra glen


Then some distant GC lightning from my window


Then it started getting a little closer

[MurrayRiver1712]

Merry Christmas everyone. Been a great few hours with thunder, and another storm is about to go thru Echuca.

[Anthony Violi]

Think we will see one more round of mid level storms this morning, then we should get some good clearance and hope the temps hit 30 at least.

Convection should rival yesterday, however i notice a surface low forming over the wimmera. Which is interesting.

All the convection through the wimmera is on the north side of the convergence line running east/west straight across the state. Not sure if thats good for us or not, however as long it spikes up to 30 we will be fine.

[Jake Smethurst]

Merry Christmas everyone!! Already shower/thunderstorm activity occurring with heaps of convection developing. Lots of Cu all around here already!! Going to be a good day, I should have my Ipad with me today so I will have internet!!

AWF SEVERE THUNDERSTORM ADVICE
Please use official warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology for professional services.

Isolated thunderstorm activity is currently occurring across Victoria, with several cells producing lightning; one near Echuca, another in West and South Gippsland, and smaller cells around the western suburbs of Melbourne.

No severe thunderstorms are currently evident on weather radar across the state, however today's conditions are very unstable, and flash flooding, large hailstones and damaging winds are all possible. The latest visual satellite indicates widespread strong convection developing. The thunderstorm chart is currently being re-evaluated and should be issued by 10:30am this morning.

AWF Severe Thunderstorm Advice will be issued intermittently throughout the day.

[Anthony Violi]

Much convection to your west and nw Jake?

[droughtbreaker]

No problems with clearance around here, just some areas of cirrus and cirrostratus around, other than that it is blue sky.

It's more humid today, temperatures may struggle a bit compared to yesterday but still should get to 30C near to sea level in the south and mid 30s north of the divide.
The deepening trough and low is an obvious feature of the day along with a late southerly change. Models are really ramping up rainfall this evening following the change.

[Mosaic]

Neat shots Ricky, really enjoyed the Lovejoy image and the lightning wiht an Orion backdrop. That triple bolt was sure spectacular.
Plenty of instability at the moment. Missed direct action last night, but did get a far off lightning show to the NE at midnights.

[Dane]

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO Everyone
Well Santa delivered for me - a great Lightning show last night as cells passed just to my south, I Notice that the lightning tracker scored over 27000 lightning strikes across the state up to 2am today. http://www.gpats.com.au/php/repository/VIC.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
Then this morning another storm which dropped 6.6mm's on my house and took the YTD to 1001.6mm's the second year running over 1000mm's
We have now had 6 thunder days this month and 12 since the start of November.
We have 23 thunder days this year (my Count) the most I have observed since 1996 when we had 26 thunder days.
Have a great Christmas everyone and lets hope we have another great year next year

[Jake Smethurst]

Released the thunderstorm chart here: http://www.theaustralianweatherforum.co ... ecast.html, and audio briefing here: http://theaustralianweatherforum.com/vi ... efing.html

Yeah Anthony quite a bit, small stuff now but it looks okay. Off to the families now! But I will have internet.

[Anthony Violi]

Thanks Jake, looks like temps will start to climb now with a fair bit of clearance...Dps are very high so they will erupt again.

Fire forecast has LAL of 2 for much of Vic, so once they get going will be a great day. As Andrew pointed out, expect a big area of storms to turn to thundery rain tonight for most of southern Vic. Trough still offshore with the low forming over the NW of the state, should be a great afternoon and evening.

[Geoff]

Wow! New Oregon rainguage set up and 2 minutes later our first shower of the day has struck, how lucky is that!

[droughtbreaker]

Convection starting up now and looking really good. Nice glaciated tops visible on Cu and development is very vertical, i.e. towers. We still need a few more hours of heating before it really gets going though. There is also an interesting mixture of very low level development and mid level as well so you can tell just how moist and unstable it is throughout the atmosphere.

[johnno]

Mid level instabilty? Checked
Low level instability convection for later? Checked
Very warm temps? Checked
High moisture level/Humidity? Checked
Northerly wind come through here? Checked
Get a southerly/SW change later converging with the Northerlies? Checked.


Its on like donkey kong!