Hi Everyone!
Congrats to everyone on their excellent photos and reporting!!! What an amazing event. Thoughts to all those who have damage to contend with on what should be a festive time.
I have been down at Flinders on the MP since the 22nd Dec, but made a quick trip up to Melb Christmas night for Boxing Day. Things have been pretty busy here and I haven't had much of a chance to get to the laptop to find out the low down...mostly had the phone, but it's too hard to surf the net with constantly!
Christmas Eve down here we were treated to about a 10 hour intermittent storms through the night....for which I only had about 2 hours sleep. We were treated to some very close flangs, but not terribly much rain. The lightning was flashing about every 3 seconds at one point. Thankfully, Santa managed to avoid being struck and made it down the chimney
Earlier in the day I was watching the explosive development towards the NE, which one member (can't remember who it was exactly...my apologies!) photographed from Phillip Island. I attempted too, but was just a tad too far away from here to get any good pics. Awesome to watch, none the less!
Christmas Day I checked the radar when I could and was astounded at what I saw...I think we all were! At about 5:30 a storm developed out in Bass Strait which had me out photographing it. We were under the anvil shield from the storms affecting Melbourne, which included a lovely Mammatus display. I only saw 1 CG from the storm in Bass Strait, but it was rumbling away and there was also greenage in the clouds. I'll attempt to get some photos up at some stage...but I'm finding myself trying to entertain 4 kids at the moment, and not having much time to do anything for myself.
We left Flinders around 7pm in bright sunshine, but headed into the unknown under the HUGE anvil, which still had updraughts towards the west. A few distant CG's were observed while we went through Frankston, but once on Eastlink we were treated to a gorgeous backlit hail shaft with a rainbow, as well as a couple of CG's. The torrential rain hit at the Monash interchange with huge drops, and then continued to rumble away until after 10pm.
Home escaped any sort of damage (no hail) and ended up with 29mm. Hopefully I'll have some photos up soon..ish.