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.

The storm hit with moderate rain. After it passed, about 15km or so out to sea was the 2nd storm behind this one. CG's comming down and some great deep rumbles of thunder. Much more active than the first. From the moment I saw the storm there was a persistant lowering which got bigger and bigger as it the storm came closer to the coast. I decided to bolt back to Maroubra as the storm looked like it was going to pass just to my north. Half way there the lowering was now large and low, a huge rain curtain just behind me with strong winds along the front of the storm. There was a clear area of grass between 2 roads and I pulled over and watched the lowering.

Then I noticed a funnel cloud form under the lowering!!!! This was fantastic!!! It moved left and sort of dissapeared and another one formed! multi vortex funnel cloud !!! WOOHOOO I snapped photos and then the film ran out. Just when it looked the best ! I quickly swapped over film but it was too late the rain curtain was now almost blocking the view and less than 100 metres behind me. I managed to snap 1 good photo of it before the film ran out and I lost view because of rain. Leaving tracks I bolted to Maroubra. Just outside the main drag I pulled over as a huge wall of water and wind driven hail hit the car bringing visibility from 1km+ to 10 metres in seconds. I quickly pulled over and got out the video camera.

Wind was rocking the car and hail was smashing down everywhere. Only small but with the strong winds (around 50 knots) it was VERY loud and caused a few dents on the car. The largest hail I found was 2.5cm with most of it 2cm or just under. This lasted for a few minutes and then eased off a little. Whilst filming hail falling in a park... *FLASH* behind me. Then instantanious thunder. The strike hit less than 15 metres behind my parked car. This got the adrenalin going, 20 seconds later another CG about 300 metres or so away behind a house on the other side of the park. Crash booooooommmmmm it was great ! Hail was still falling and the storm had moved on, so I headed to Maroubra heads on the beach and there was plenty of flash flooding around! This quickly drained away though. The storm moved further North and I hung around a little watching the storm and listening to distant thunder before heading home. Storms were firing everywhere, with nice convection to the SW, W and NW as storms tracked along the ranges. The storms on the Central Tablelands and Hunter where severe with an STA issued. I did not chase these, the SE'ly was well established in Sydney by now as the storms cleared northwards and weakened somewhat.

Damage occured in the Maroubra area, with part of the roof blown off the surf club, and damage to a few other business's nearby as debri from the roof smashed glass windows etc. Reports also of a few trees down.