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It started. The chase I had to have. Following a year's hard work, with few significant weather events dotted along the road, the journey west on Saturday morning was cathartic as well as exciting.

During the last week at work, I was painfully looking at the storms that had been consistently firing off for the last 8 days in the central ranges and plains of NSW. Its seems an eternity since NSW has welcomed lingering trough that had both good moisture and excellent windshear to accompany, and, well with my holidays starting in only a few days, I was fearing that I was going to miss this event. But the trough kept on keeping on bringing devastating floods and severe weather towns from northern and southern boarders.

My destination was Young, with the view that I might need to push a little further south depending on my timing. After sleep in (yes...not the greatest start) I left late morning. I left in sunshine, but emerged over the ranges at Lithgow in heavy cloud. I pushed on hoping to try to clear the mess I found myself in. Indeed as moved toward Bathurst some very heavy rain and small hail. Heading toward Blaney I encountered a guster that was sitting on the ground - this was the second time in a year that I had climbed those ranges to stumble across a guster that was virtually on top of me. As I tried to stop and get some shots, it rocked over dumping 2cm hail on me and the happy tourists staying at the Carcoar Dam Tourist Park. They had plenty of beer, so the hail wasn't really noticed.

Upon reaching Cowra, I was in clear air - and things were looking very dry. I was hoping that the higher instability, moisture and dropping 500mb temps further south would kick up something later on. As I neared Young two things became apparent, one - stuff was firing down past Cootamundra but was very messy and low topped; two- the locust season was fierce with my entire front end looking like I had driven through bowl of soggy cornflakes.

I headed toward Harden and Boorowa as things started to happen. A line of boring cumulus suddenly went up with constant thunder booming around the rolling yellow hills of the region. In 15 minutes the clouds went from static billowing pillows to rock hard updrafts with trailing hail shafts and the occasional cracking cloud to ground (CG) lightning strike.

Further south some lovely structure of a isolated updraft base separated form the main precipitation curtain was promising to see. 2cm hail started falling out of clear air which brought another complexity. I would like to pause here and discuss the makeup of the Australian locust. Out of the bug family that the typical driver comes across on our roads, the locust is one that is sizable, and colourful. On the impact with one's car it makes a considerable mess - being a yellowy-green ooze that spreads out greatly. The locust ooze, when splattered onto a car at high speed, coupled with warm air-temperatures makes the ooze turn into a glue. As the hail fell, this unsuspecting chaser having not used his wipers for 200km mindlessly turned them on. Upon this action the entire wiper blade shattered, remained glued on the screen while the arm kept wiping (thus scoring a track into my windscreen). So as 2cm hail was failing, I wasn't delighting in the cold-icy goodness falling from the sky, I was replacing my wiper blade with a refill that I had thoughtfully purchased the weekend before.

I pushed further east as the development continued to blow up in that direction. On the descent into the town of Harden I was greeted with some magnificent landscapes; of hail falling into open fields of wheat, and rainbows luring me beyond each bend in the road. The skies were rumbling constantly, yet no CG touched the ground.

Halfway to Boorowa I took the road north, when a nice tail cloud started developing along on the north-western flank of the storm. As I got further north I spotted an interesting development, back to west, south of the Young township.

Initially all I saw a single isolated base, just like the one spotted some 2 hours earlier. However this base had rapid upward motion, and was growing intensively.

I luckily found a great clearing on a hill in a suburb south of Young. The storm had a singular and sustained updraft pulse for over 40 minutes, with rotation evident in mid to lower levels at storm genesis, progressively getting stronger in the lower levels as the storm matured. However it was in the latter stages of my viewing that the development of the storm was at its most explosive.

As the sun was disappearing over the horizon, huge bellowing updrafts were exploding over the smooth sculptuered base of this storm, catching the last gasp of the orange sunset rays. The updrafts were vertical - and were initially not affected by the strong windshear that had tilted most the updrafts on this day. As the storm matured a strong inflow tail strengthened to the east of the storm. The base had become far more turbulent.

The separation from updraft base to precipitation curtain had remained for all this time, and as the light faded it was harder to observe the distinct features of the storm. Supringsingly - no CG's from this storm at all - only cloud to cloud rumbles.

Almost 100 minutes since I first saw the storm I captured this shot as the storm was moving ENE. The next morning on statewideABC radio - fruit growers from Morrisons Hill and Redbridge reported 2-3cm hail (20cent piece size). This was the area that I believe the last storm of the day to be in

Whether this storm was a supercell, is an interesting question. Definition wise - it fits the bill, both visually, and the reports of damage are consistent with geographical observation of the storm. But to me it just didn't feel violent enough for me to be a supercell - especially compared to the events of the following Monday. But it was hard to find that in the definitions....