TDU - Day 1
Friday 13 December

Sydney to Moree

The day started early for Matt and Dann as both left there place for mine in St Ives. Around 11am we were all packed and ready to go . The journey today took us up the F3 through to the New England Hwy to Willolw Tree before turning off onto the highway to Gunnedah, Narrabri and Moree. Nothing to reoirt as today was a driving day getting us in place for tomorrow. However there was a sighting of a small dust devil and a Ribbit from Matt Smith.

Tomorrow we are headed towards Goondiwindi.

james

On Wednesday, October 13 2002, the biggest dust storm in over 30 years hit the eastern states of Australia, covering the landscape in a film of red dust which was whipped up by strong winds across inland Australia.

Strong northwesterly winds ahead of a brutal southwesterly wind change lifted millions of tonnes of valuable topsoil across NSW/QLD and out to the sea. The drought and lack of vegetation in inland farming areas no doubt contributed to this rare event.

From 11.30am to 4pm the dust storm moved through the Sydney Basin and Hunter Valley, reducing visibility to around 3km. West of the ranges visibility was down to 300m or less. Bushfires also contributed to the hazy sky. Roma in South Central QLD reported visibility of 100m, and Dalby in SE QLD 500m!

What a great day. A NSW Australian Severe Weather Association meeting was held at my parents place during the afternoon. We planned to have a BBQ and watch storm video's during the afternoon. There was a chance of storms during the day, so we all had one eye one the sky. After eating a great BBQ and watching some video's (including Sam Barricklows 2001 chase tape with brilliant time lapse video), some of the weaker towers we observed earlier had started to really take off. We were all standing in the middle of the street watching, and a decision was made to chase.

Erin and Mario jumped into my car, Matt Piper and Terry into Daniel Weatherhead's car, Geoff and David Croan into Jimmy's car. I lost sight of Malcolm Ninnes unfortunatly, as it was great he let us use his laptop to get a radar update before we chased.

Today has been dubbed "Rotatorfest" by Anthony Cornelius due to the large number of rotating thunderstorms along eastern NSW. The setup was fantastic for supercells. An upper low early morning located just west of Melbourne moving NE towards Sydney/Hunter. This produced a strengthening jetstream right over central NSW of 100-110 knots. A surface trough was also present, bringing in moist NE winds. The trough line was set to fire with the upper low approaching and associated cold pool, jetstream and good surface moisture and low level inflow. The sky was cloud free in the morning. Storms lasted all night off the coast and still going strong early morning. Area's of fog were around in the valleys but soon burnt off. Surface temps reached around 30-32 degrees.