Summary of events. The day started with storms expected to fire along a trough line ahead of a southerly change late in the evening. Mid level light showers cleared very early morning and the atmosphere was primed for storms. Dew points were very low behind the trough, but along coastal area's DP's remained high around 18-20 during the morning, with hot northerlys comming in, bringing temperatures that would hit 38+ in all area's of the Hunter and the Sydney basin. Wind shear was OK, and strength was OK as well. With the sounding traces at Williamtown and Sydney, it was clear the storms would be very high based, and would need the ranges to help break the cap, but once it did development would be explosive. This is exactly what happened. As storms fired on the ranges and moved east they tapped into the moisture in the Sydney area and Hunter. I got word of a possible tornado or 2 in Sydney, around Richmond and Hornsby, and very intense lightning, 4000 CG strikes in 1 hour in Sydney alone! Some incredible damage around in Sydney, as high based storms dropped there rain, cooling the surrounding air and sinking very quickly towards the ground causing damaging winds as it spead out. Thousands of tree's snapped/fallen over, onto houses, cars etc. 2 school girls died when a gum tree snapped and fell on their tent during a school excursion, our hearts go out to them, and the familys. Damage is expected to cost between 70 and 100 million dollars.

The day started off with a thundery rain band early morning. Storms were kicking up on the back end of the cloud band but were weak. Storms were forecast and all models pointed towards a stormy day from about the Illawarra northwards, depending on when the SE'ly change pushed through. Rain clearing with a trough pushing through with storms and a strong southerly chance in the evening. Perfect setup. Jet was aroud 60-70 knots, LI around -6 and a mid level jet at 500mb around 50 knots. Temps in the high 20's expected with good dew point, it was set to explode. I headed west early morning, around 9am. Singleton was my first stop looking for the clearing edge of the rain band. Before I arrived the rain and weak storms had cleared and a storm exploded down towards Bathurst.

Report by Matthew Smith

Storm season was expected to start off with a bang today, the first day of spring, as a low centred almost on Adelaide produced a front through the eastern states. Storms were forecast through the eastern half of NSW and into QLD. Light rain and virga showers cleared during the morning, leaving the Hunter in blue sky with patches of acca's around the place. Models indicated that the storms would form late in the afternoon, 500 temps were -22C and with DP's increasing with a NE wind, and temps forecast to about 21C, I was getting pretty excited.

Report and Photos by Matthew Smith

Storms formed the evening before way out to sea off the south coast along the front and this took my interest slightly. The front was due in Sydney in the morning sometime, so waking up and checking radar about 9am it was good to see some heavy showers off the coast near Kiama and Wollongong with the change. These were slowly headed N/NE and after a short while I decided to head to Maroubra on the coast in the hope I might see something.

Heading off it was clear convection was strong with good amounts of pilius ontop of each new updraught. The first storm was large and looked strong. Getting closer to Maroubra some mid level cloud blocked the view of the storm so I decided to head to La perouse to look for lightning. Static was slowly increasing and as I arrived at La Parouse, a nice shaped lowering came into view! Snapped a few photos and before I knew it an inflow band had formed connecting to the cloud base! Snapped a few more photos and it started to become disorganised and the rain area started heading towards me. The strange thing is lightning was fairly constant on AM but I could see no lightning... I was a little confused.