Today had all the signs of being a good chase day with storms expected to fire along a trough line over the central west slopes and plains. The day before thier were supercells reported from the north west slopes and plains with Jimmy Deguara witnessing a beautifull supercell near Coonabarrabran. Today wasn't going to be as good but there was a very high chance of seeing a good lightning show after sunset as the formation of a meso-scale convective system was inevitable.

With Matt driving I was free to take pictures for once and I started as we were approaching Bathurst.


                                                                                                                                                                           






From Bathurst we headed west to Orange along the Mitchell Highway through Lucknow.


                                                                                                                                






From Orange we headed north west to Cumnock. We stopped at Cumnock for about 30 minutes to observe the situation and decided to head south west to Parkes where strong cumulus towers were developing along the trough line. We had origionally planned to target the area between Dubbo, Orange and Parkes, but there was a large gap in the developing cumulus right in our target area. So instead of getting sunburnt we decided to make the most of what was allready developing south west. 


                                                                                                                                                                           






                                          






We headed into Parkes, got some lunch and decided to head further south towards Forbes where the strongest of the towers had now developed into a thunderstorm. We stopped along the side of the Newell Highway halfway between Parkes and Forbes to observe the storm and shared our lunch with the flies.


                                                                                                                                                              








                                                            








The storm was pretty weak and was rapidly moving east south east towards Cowra. Further south east a complex of storms had developed and further north to the west of Dubbo, storms had also developed into a complex. We decided to head east to get a better look at the storms near Cowra. When we got to Eugowra we changed our minds and headed north instead as the storm system near Dubbo looked much more promising. We headed up to Molong and up the Mitchell Highway again. On the way north a stronger looking cell had developed near Mt Canobolas on the northern side of the southern system. It looked ok for a while but the northern system was a lot higher so we kept going north. Eventually we stopped halfway between Molong and Wellington to observe the storm complex that was now just to our west. In the first photo below you can see the storm near orange to the south in the left hand side of the image.


                                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                                       








                                                                                     









We were watching the western storm for a while but the storm near Orange was looking nice so we headed up the road a bit and found a spot to watch it for a while.


                                                                                                                                                                           






                                                                                     






The western storm was now getting very close so we headed back to our origonal position and watched it again for about 20 minutes before the rain got us back into the car.


                                                                                                                                                                           













Eventually we had a decision to make. Do we head south to Orange and east from there? Or do we head up to Wellington and east from there? We decided on the latter and headed north to Wellington right through the storm to our west which was now crossing the Mitchell Highway just to our north. We got heavy rain and some small hail in the core but not much else. As we got into Wellington though there were a lot of broken tree brances strewn around the place so the wind must have been a lot stronger here on the northern side of the core. By now the storm was to our east and the setting sun was lighting up the back end which looked awesome. We turned east onto the road to Mudgee and caught our first sight of the awesome rainbow. About one kilometer up the road we stopped and took these awesome photos.


                                                                                                                                                              








                                                                                                                                                                                            









After 15 minutes we gave chase again. The rainbow kept persiting and after one more brief stop the rest of the photos were taken from the car.


                                                                                                                    








                                                                                                                       









We chased the storm all the way to Gulgong. By the time we got there it was dark and the lightning show was everything we hoped it would be. We headed up to flirtation hill and videoed the lightning for at least 40 minutes before the storm system got too far away. From there we headed south towards home. On the way we saw more lightning from storm cells over the Wollomi national park but we didn't get any more video. All up it was a nice sucessfull chase and a good way to spend a lazy saturday afternoon.





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