Updates to my Australian Storm chase pages

[Michael Thompson]

With my local Australian storm chase season drawing to a close I finally caught up on some backlog in the web page department. Not as many chases this year due to work commitments.


http://ozthunder.com/chase/chase79.html - 12th January 2008 - a nice lightning storm, a rather photogenic storm day.
http://ozthunder.com/chase/chase80.html - 31st January 2008 - a straight from work chase, but no video. A nasty little storm, but one that the photos do not do justice to.
http://ozthunder.com/chase/chase77.html - 18th November 2007 - my best chase for the season - flash flooding monster - short video link from page.
http://ozthunder.com/chase/chase78.html - 17th November 2007 - a fairly weak storm, but nice colours

 

[Bernard Hulshof]

A couple of stunning lightning and storm pictures Michael!
Although you weren't able to chase much, how would you describe this season, slow or active?

Hopefully the Dutch chase season (ahum) will see some nice storms this year!

 

[Melissa Moon]

Michael, your website really makes me miss Australia. Very nice photos!

 

[Michael Thompson]

Updates to my lightning web pages

I have also recently updated my lightning web pages with pictures from several recent events.

http://ozthunder.com/photo/light.htm
Some examples







-----
Michael Thompson
ozthunder.com

 

[Michael Thompson]

Hi Bernard

Our storm season was a bit more active than last, however jet stream winds were very slight to slack therefore pulse storms ruled.

This appears to be my observation with La Nina years - weak summer jets.

El Nino years on the other hand seem to have decent jets, but lack essential moisture.

I wish the Dutch storm team the best of luck!

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Michael ... just beautiful. The combo storm-moon-over the water is amazing. This one is also a favorite for me: http://ozthunder.com/chase/030904p.jpg

Any tips you'd like to share? Gorgeous stuff -

 

[Gerrit Gulden]

Hi Micheal, Great to hear from you. Some very amazing lightning and cloud structure photos. Looks like you had fun. Hope your next season will be even better.

Take care...

-gerrit

 

[Darrin Rasberry]

When and where does the Australian storm season occur? I imagine the road networks are next to impossible to work with there, and that Australia might not have an SPC-like government entity similar to the United States.

That being said, I wonder why Oz doesn't put up some Dopplers, especially given the outside but present chance of tornadoes occurring in populated areas there.

I would love to chase in Australia some day!

 

[Michael Thompson]

Hi Darrin

Storm season here is a rather open ended thing - October to March generally with November to Christmas your best chance for severe storms.

There are doppler radars and freely available - Sydney dos not have a freely available one, but several other centres do.

Here is the link

http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/radar/

...and yes to the road network and SPC type. The road network is very bad, having been to the USA I can say that in our better chase areas it probably compares to Montana.

I am working on an article comparing chasing USA and Australia (in regard to tornadoes there is no comparison at all)