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.

Ended up watching our first cell develop around 2pm N of Canonba. Unfortunately a cell went up in front of it blocking our views for a good 2 hours. However all was not lost as soon the cell in front became organised, moving slowly east and producing some nice wall clouds for 2 hours. As the main Canonba cell behind was moving ENE (we could still see just the northern edge in the distance) we headed to Quambone to get a better view.

The next few hours were filled with some amazing wall clouds, base structure, inflow bands and some of the most powerful lightning bolts I have ever seen (including a large number of anvil cg's that would hit 10 to 20 km ahead of the storm). The Canonba supercell had arrived into Quambone!

Some amazing interaction between the inflow and outflow at times was seen. The wall cloud went through stages of being well defined as the 15-20 knot North-easterly fed in, until outflow from the RFD behind the wall cloud would push it out, giving it a guster appearance. Sure enough the inflow would then push back in and the wall cloud became solid again. If only we had a low level jet we may have been in with a chance of a funnel or two.

I love chasing out on the NSW plains, the land and scenery just gives you that big storm feeling and the views are endless. Now about that Tamworth Radar the BOM are meant to be installing ....

James