Report by Matthew Smith

Today was looking good for storms, a rain band clearing in the morning, to moist humid conditions and increasing temperatures which got into the mid to high 20's in the afternoon. I was expecting storms to take off in the clear air behind the rain band, and all morning since I had been up, there had been a line of showers near wagga, slowly moving NE lagging behind the rain band which must have been the trough line.

I waited until lunch as the line got closer, and saw some weakish congestus on the ranges. I decided to head out west before peak hour traffic hit incase anything got going. I could hear static on AM (1 every 30 seconds or so) and anvil to my far south associated with the band of showers (now storms). I was near Luddenham headed south but Daniel had just got out of Uni and I went to his Fiance's house near Penrith to check up on radar and watch and wait. We were expecting something to take off on the Blue Mountains and at times it looked like it might have, but it just didn't get going. A strong cap and winds swinging NW drying out the place a bit prevented anything from developing. We watched the cells down south on radar, and decided "what the hell" and headed south to see what we could get.

As we were driving south, near Camden, a few towers shot up big time, shooting straight up and not stopping until they anvilled out.

We were ontop of Razorback Ridge when I thought I spotted a funnel cloud from the back end of one of the huge updraiughts. We turned around back to the top of the ridge at a lookout that gave us a fantastic view of the storm. 2 suspicious lowerings caught out attention, one of them possibly a funnel cloud, and another looked like a wall cloud, but could have been a guster. Was hard to say. We watched the storm and took video and photos, and we were joined by Matt Pearce on the ridge. I spotted another small funnel and pointed it out to them, Daniel saw it but we could not get a photo as it only lasted about 10 seconds.

Contemplating what to do, we decided to head towards Appin then onto Bulli Pass to watch the storm as it moved out to sea. We were briefly held up by a large truck negociating a hairpin turn, which he got around thankfully! We made it to Bulli Pass and watched the storm move out to sea with an interesting inflow band. Fog and mist could be seen to the south where the storm had passed through. We watched for a while and Myself and Matt headed back, Daniel stayed on to watch a bit of lightning.

When I was almost home, I glanced back to see a huge overshoot and backsheared anvil lite up by the sun that was just about set. The storm was way out to sea now, but going by this observation, and the radar and satelite pictures, I believe the last storm to develope on the north side of the trough developed into a Supercell. In the states, this storm is given the name "Tail End Charlie" and is often a supercell and producer of tornadoes. The storm persisted well into the night out to sea. Of note was the Jet and how the storm formed near the right exit region. Very similar to the Supercell that developed in the same area on March 9. LI forecasts were about -3 to -4 in the area where the storm developed.