Super Cell Storm

As some of you may know, the other weekend we had a full on storm.  Now storms out here are something else, thunder and lightning (proper forks of lightning and lots of it), big rain, large hail, high winds sometimes to cyclone proportions.  We have entered storm season with a bang this year!

The weather forecasters were saying there may be a bit of wind and rain, but as rain has been so scarce over the last year no one believed them.  Fortunately for us, a friend put us onto a storm chasers facebook page.  They were excited, saying the storm forecast hasn’t been this good for 4 years.

So we listened to them, stocked up with food, made sure everything was charged and prepared the kids for a storm.

The storm chasers were right on Saturday morning 2 super cell storms ripped through Brisbane taking people unawares.  Trees down, market stalls ripped apart, cars written off. 

We thought we had avoided it, but half way through our movie in the evening the bangs started, then the flashes.  We went outside to watch for a bit, amazing strikes of lightning flashing across the sky.

The boys dealt with it well.  Reuben was quite excited, Rowan was interested, but also really worried that we would get struck by lightning.  The bangs did scare them a bit too, they were so loud.  One even shook the house! 

Then the rain started, and boy did it rain!

By Sunday morning the rain had eased and the storm had passed.  The pool was nicely topped up and it looked like the rain may stop and it would be a nice day.

So we decided to head out to the Glass House Mountains.  On the way we found a lovely little coffee shop, so we stayed there for a bit, reading the newspaper reports on yesterdays devastation in Brissy. 

We made it up to a lookout in the centre of the mountain range where you get an amazing 360 degree view of the stunning mountain range.  We lit up a bbq, chucked on our sausages and started to prepare our lunch.

The lookout is very busy with tourists and locals.  There was also a lot of people who had been out 4 wheel driving, their vehicles caked in mud. 

Then it started to get busy with people with full on cameras, all running to the top of the lookout.  What were they doing? …………………

Trying to get good storm photos!  Over one side of the mountain range the clouds were starting to build, fast.  They were thick, heavy and very dark and they were coming our way!  Rowan had a bit of a panic until we explained to him that a car is a very safe place to be if we were to be struck. He was ok then, he didn’t need to sit in the car, just the knowledge that that was where go was enough for him.   We waited for our snags to cook, ate our lunch watching it come in, until the rain started.  Then we jumped in the car and headed home.

It was an interesting drive.  The boys fell asleep, which was probably good as I was very nervous.  It took a long time to get back as we had to drive at 40kmph.  One part of the road was flooded, but we made it back in one piece, put the car in the garage and watched the rest of the day’s storm come and go.  Tris even went to beach to try and get some good photos.

It is very hard to get good photos of storms, but here are ours……………………

Tris' best shot of the evening number 2's lightning

These shots are from our back garden

Storm moving out from Dicky Beach

Driving home from the Glass House Mountains

Glass House Mountains - watching the storm coming in from Brisbane

Silly daft poms having a bbq on top of a mountain with a storm coming in!