June 9th Chase Report - Melbourne and Surrounds

Throughout the last week the models had been predicting a trough to move through today, the remnants of the low-pressure system that developed over the bight region earlier in the week.

Overnight Friday an area of showers persisted through Southern Victoria, leading to some decent falls, 22mm at my place. The BOM had forecasted just a few showers.

By the time I had woken on Saturday morning there was a heavy cover of low cloud; the air was very moist from the nights rain. I thought, grrr, it’s going to be a shocker of a day, no action.

But before long the low cloud started to clear away to reveal some not too shabby Cu. At first I thought this was just the remnants of last nights showers and would clear away.

So off I went to do my days business (which involved exchanging 2 scanners and getting a film developed). When I came out of the chemist in Boronia I noticed that some very nice looking Cu had started to grow. There was a lot more clearance now and allowed me to better judge the atmosphere, I was off home to jump on the net.

Got home in 5 minutes; by this time a nice Cu tower was going up just near my place, I took a quick snap. I had decided to chase.

Loaded up the radar and saw that multiple cells were going up to the north of the city, with pink around the Wallan area. Excitement built. I quickly rang Macca to tell him of the conditions. Macca was already out on the road up near Wallan enjoying the days offerings.

So out with my brother Pete I went. We had driven not more than 10 minutes when we forced to pull over at the gorgeous sight of Cj’s popping up everywhere.

The Cj below developed some nice Pileus, this cell just looked like taking off.

We continued on our way towards Lilydale, continuing to monitor the growing Cu Towers in front of us. I tried to take a pic out the front of the car, but it came out a little over exposed (was looking into the sun), but it shows the extent to which this towering cumulus was developing.

We came to a clearing on the road to Lilydale; this gave me the perfect opportunity to shoot the developing flanking line.

We continued heading to the NE, the developing Cb becoming larger and larger in front of us. Then it came, the rain, and boy it was heavy. Large drops pounded the wind screen. Then it was over, we had only just brushed the rain curtain. We decided we would keep out of the rain so that we could get better photos of any storm features.

We over took the cell and made it to Yarra Glen. From here we were sandwiched between 2 areas of activity.

To the south was the cell we had been watching develop from my place, it was now dumping near Lilydale and had a very dark, ragged base.

I took a few pics of the cell before ringing my mum for some radar updates (Thanks mum)

She told me that the Lilydale cell had reached red in intensity (indicating rain over 100mm per hour). This was a small compact baby.

My mum commented that the Wallan cells had begun to weaken so we decided to hang around the valley for a bit.

We came to a hill that had a great view to the north. We pulled over on the side of the road and pulled out the camera. We could see the decaying cells to the north, which looked very photogenic with the filtered sun.

By now the cell that went through Lilydale was heading into the hills, out of chase territory. The cell was also noticeably weaker.

We decided to call it quits and head home. On the way home we got some great views of low cloud over Mt Dandenong.

We also noticed that the instability was picking up to the west and south, was there something else to come?

We dropped of a film at the chemist (all the above pics) and headed home. Once home I jumped on the net and loaded up radar. To my delight there was pink on radar near Geelong.

Out we headed, towards Cranbourne.

The rest of this report is still to come once the next film is developed. Will feature CB’s at sunset.