Vic - Potential showers/storms - 21st Dec to Boxing Day 2011

[Skywalker]

Good morning all,
well what a day yesterday was. We spent the day at Craigieburn with my brother's family & missed the worst of the weather, but had a amazing view the action sweeping through the western & northern suburbs (including my neck of woods grrrr ). None of my family share my interest in weather but even they were commenting on what they were observing skyward with what was happening with the cloud movement & structures. Fantastic stuff!
Still got our share of things in Craigieburn later during the evening, massive bolts, heavy rain, small hail & the loudest crack of thunder I've heard in a really long time. Everyone jumped about 100 metres in the air except my 1 year old.

It seems the worst of the action was just down the road from my neck of the woods. The in-laws from Deer Park rang us & they got obsolutely smashed! Garden is totally destroyed according to my father in-law. Also heard that Keilor downs & Sydenham copped it as well.

It looks like we somehow escaped the large hail after inspection of the house when we arrived home late last night. 45mm in the gauge & swimming pools in the usual places around the backyard but no hail damage, which tells me we didn't get hit.

Update: Just spoke with my neighbour, confirmed we actually received hail as both of his cars have been damaged.

[Bellarine]

Utterly lazy journalism on the Herald Sun's behalf - you'd think they would validate "user supplied pics" before publishing (look at the two dates on the pages) - and no they would not publish my comment
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w100 ... s/lazy.jpg

[Jake Smethurst]

Sounds like quite an amazing event, shame I missed most of it unfolding as I was at family etc ... all yesterday. The radar images of the hook are some of the most cleanest I have seen for a hook in Australia by far, very nasty stuff in deed. I did mention in the thunderstorm forecast yesterday organisation in thunderstorms was a high probability, so I'm happy with my forecast for yesterday. Also a good pick from John.

We managed no rainfall at all, in fact had a few grass fires down the road yesterday afternoon. 4 CFA tracks got it under control in about just over an hour though. But it's quite dry down here compared to most of the state at the moment.

Fantastic effort to everyone that got a storm, I am so jealous but hopefully not too much damage!!

[brayden]

Utterly lazy journalism on the Herald Sun's behalf - you'd think they would validate "user supplied pics" before publishing (look at the two dates on the pages) - and no they would not publish my comment
http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w100 ... s/lazy.jpg

Yeah I wrote a comment and emailed them too.

I guess the hail was smaller for this event than 6th March this year?

[Meso]

Save your time emailing them guys. They've proven time and again they don't care about facts or research.

I think the hail yesterday rivaled March, Brayden. Some pics of some pretty big stones floating around.

[Meso]

Melbourne even caught the eye of none other than Reed Timmer!!

Check out his Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/ReedTimmerTVN" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Supercellimpact]

Yeah I seen that Reed timmer posted a radar image of the hook. The Americans were like the hook is the wrong way around Lol. Anyway what an amazing event, one of the best I have ever seen in my 18yrs alive. If only we could get a storm like that up here. Maybe, because it's still summer !

[Meso]

Yeah they're fascinated by it being the other way around haha.

Another guy posted - "we don't have tornados here reed they are called servere thunderstorms"

WTF?

[Rhino]

Missed out on pretty much everything here, but really not dissapointed at all. Really hope most dodged the big damage that was around, only got back home so don't know who copped what yet, and not great to see unfortunately. We all love the weather and storms but she can be a real ***** at times, don't mind my french. Melbourne becoming the home of monster hail it seems unfortunately and the photos and news reports I'm seeing are seriously crazy crap.

Rhino.

[Dc449]

Yeah they're fascinated by it being the other way around haha.

Another guy posted - "we don't have tornados here reed they are called servere thunderstorms"

WTF?

Yeah i was a bit WTF!

[Supercellimpact]

Ok an image of the Tornado has surfaced !!

Here it is on the Weatherzone forum torwards the bottom

http://forum.weatherzone.com.au/ubbthre ... 1045795/15

[Anthony Violi]

Not a tornado, thats just a downburst or rain.

Tornado looked like this.



Went up to the farm this morning, strawberries were completely destroyed, not that we had to go up there and check it. Was obvious when it was occuring this was a serious storm of epic proportions.

[Lily]

Getting drizzly showers moving through here, not all of them showing up on radar.

[Bellarine]

Save your time emailing them guys. They've proven time and again they don't care about facts or research.

True, but I sent it to MediaWatch anyway

[Meso]

Not a tornado, thats just a downburst or rain.

Tornado looked like this.



Went up to the farm this morning, strawberries were completely destroyed, not that we had to go up there and check it. Was obvious when it was occuring this was a serious storm of epic proportions.

As impressive as that photo is AV, I think what you've actually photographed there is an inflow tail.

And the one on WZ is most definitely a rain curtain.

[rikjpool]

Agree with meso on the above post.
Still an amazing shot! But certainly inflow....
As for the rain curtain one, I was unaware there was the possibility of tornodoes after dark from yesterday's storms. I'd like to see the exif data on that one to see what time it was taken.

On a different note, I think images should have geo tagging info recorded in. Would not be that hard to do IMO.

[AUS_Twisted]

That dark shot with the CG's is definitely long exposure after daylight hours, the Herald sun and media in general are a joke when it comes to events like this. They will use anything to get peoples attention

[Pete]

Hey guys. Fu got these shots via twitter from WIN news, they were sent in by some member of the public I'm assuming.

http://img.tapatalk.com/3aa3afab-c23d-725d.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://img.tapatalk.com/3aa3afab-c260-8892.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://img.tapatalk.com/3aa3afab-c271-8479.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Looks like a shelf to me.

[Meso]

Yeah, nothing out of the ordinary there.

[Anthony Violi]

Hard to tell from the photo but in real life it had a big rotating meso, was an amazing sight.