Matt Smith and I had spent what felt like hours running through the different computer weather models, trying to weigh up if a 1100km chase was going to be worth it the next day. At 6am on the morning of the 27th of February, Matt arrived ready to embark on a journey we thought, in the end it should be worth it.

After what has felt like years for us living in northern Sydney, the storm drought finally broke this afternoon.

After months of sitting and hoping for a storm to move through the basin, today the combination of a trough and stronger mid level winds helped ease our pain.

All afternoon storms had been brewing over the Blue Mountains and to be honest I started to think that things were not going to make it off the mountains. How wrong I was.

At around 2pm I noticed Anvils streaming across the sky and the sky darkening to the west. I decided to head out to a lookout at Dural and on the way was pleasantly surprised by the Mammatus in the anvil overhead.

Well Wednesday 17th January was certainly one of the best days I have ever seen in NSW ever. The Models were all going crazy with the first surface trough sitting over the Upper Hunter through to the Northen Tablelands with a second upper level trough due through later that night on the south coast pushing north. In the north LI levels were excellent at -6 to -9 with Cape values of around 3500. Wind was looking good with a strong SW flow from about 800mb up. 200mb was looking exceptional with a jet of around 70 - 80 knots pushing through in the late afternoon.Gasp had TT's around the 55 - 60 mark, 500 temps were due to drop 4 degrees with the advancing upper trough later in the evening, In fact nearly every model was showing near perfect setup conditions for a significant storm outbreak across NSW and into SE QLD.

We left the drizzly strato cu of sydney around 9.30am and headed to the Hunter on the F3 headed towards Scone and the Upper Hunter.