After 3 and a half weeks working without a day off, I was fortunate enough to time a few days off with a major inland trough system. A brief analysis of this day had a jet stream of 40-45 knots almost W-E at 250, 30 knots WNW-ESE at 500 with -13C temp, and surface winds were northerly around 10 knots. A trough line was in far western NSW and into eastern SA the day before, and was expected to lie almost NNW-S through west NSW and into VIC, and slowly move east into central south NSW in the afternoon, extending back NW, and stall for a few days.

James and I had been watching this system develope over the previous few days. Late afternoon on the 29th a massive cumulus field had developed in far west NSW, with isolated storms forming in the far NW. This was a good sign that low level moisture was feeding into the area, and that hopefully a source of moisture would not be a problem tomorrow afternoon when we were in the area! That evening we attended Daniel Weatherhead's bucks night and left the following morning for Wagga Wagga at 7.45am Nov 30.

The satelite picture in the morning had an extensive area of cloud and storms over central and southern Victoria, almost a mesoscale convective system. There was extensive cloud cover North-South from about Wagga Wagga east to the Great Divide. There was a clearing trend on the sat pic and with the trough line still lying to the far west and forecast for scattered showers and thunderstorms in the area, we were in high spirits!

It took just over 4 hours to arrive in Wagga Wagga from Sydney. When we arrived we grabbed a bite to eat and looking at the sat pic and radar, there was a definate clearing trend about 20km or so out of town, and a couple of showers were showing on radar. Out of town the cloud cleared and visible towers were shooting up in clear air all around the place, and some weak storms developed. Temp and Dew Point was about 33/14, and a very gusty northerly wind was blowing about 25 knots.

Over the next hour we chased a couple of weak storms that popped up around the Lockhart area. A couple of strong pulses went up to about 100km north but died soon after. After watching the weak storms we sat on the side of the road, got out some chairs, and waited for about an hour and a half. The large cumulus fields from earlier had now condensed into a couple of weak shower and storms, but still nothing looked overly strong. It was dark on the horizon to the far SW, and static was constant on the radio within 100km. Radar revealed an area of storms to the SW, extending NW-SE slowly approaching, The strongest cells were around Deniliquin and along the border. We headed towards Urana where one cell put out a nice rain foot, but it soon collapsed. It was then we saw back towards Lockhart where we had been, a large cell had exploded ahead of the trough line, much stronger and higher than the earlier storms. We decided to get a little closer, but soon it started to colapsed as more cells took off further to the north of it.

It was now decision time, do we head to the trough line where we were guaranteed to get storms, or head North intercept the isolated cells. Moisture was still a slight problem, gusty northerly up to 30 knots and 34/13 , and considering how the cell had died, we thought the convergence along the trough would be the deciding factor today and, we did not want to take the chance of chasing this distance and not getting anything, so we chose the trough line.

We headed SW for a short distance to be in touch with the approaching trough. High based storms now extended all the way NW with precip curtains varying between light and heavy as pulses went up and town, and frequent CG lightning. What was surprising was an area of scud cloud behind a rain curtain to our WSW. It did not seem to be an area of outflow, and indicated to us that a base was lower in this area, the lowest of the day! This was significant as it indicated there was deffinatly more low level moisture in this area along the trough.

We had a quick look at radar and saw the Delilquin storms had a NE componant in them and were headed our way, with large pink and red cores on radar not far to our SW. Less than 5km down the road from where we were a developing shelf cloud came into view as we flew south of Urana. The lightning with the storm was amazing, CG's were comming out and pulsing more times than I have seen previously, and alot of them were in clear air ahead of the shelf cloud. It took forever for the turnoff to Rand to come, but just in the nick of time the turnoff came and we flew eastewards ahead of the storm. We stopped numerous times to video and photograph the shelf cloud that now extended for many KM NW-SE, and we were on the northern and stronger side. The cloud motion was amazing as it usually is with shelfy's, but the green in the clouds was extremely prominant, and the lightning bolts were thick, brached, pulsing, and in clear air and striking through the shelf cloud, amzing stuff!

At Rand we had 2 options, head SE and deffinatly run straight into the storm, head NW and again get hit by the now large low shelf cloud, or head north, so we headed north not knowing there was a small westerly componant in the road to the turnoff north! As we drove along this section just west of town, the shelf cloud was over the top of us and dust was blowing across the road from nearby fields, from massive downburst out flow in the storm. Visibility was pretty poor, and the wind whilst paralleling the storm was incredibly stong, blowing both our cars onto the opposite side of the road. We reached the turnoff north towards Lockhart and saw many branches from tree's had just been broken off from the extreme wind, and one large tree was lying across the road, which we luckily could get around! We blasted north keeping ahead of the storm as it slowly weakened.

High based storms continued towards the NW along the trough at sunset but things were weakening. We headed back to Wagga Wagga where I got a place to stay the night and James headed back to Sydney, in time for work on Monday morning.

The adrenalin of this chase was something we have never quiet experienced, it was very intense and one wrong decision or turn and we would have been engulfed by the severe storm. We estimate wind speeds of at least 50 knots whilst we were under the shelf cloud at the most intense part of the storm. Large hail was reported from towards Deniliquin. On video, James captured a lightning bolt that pulsed 13 times, with many bolts pulsing more than 5. After a couple of bust chases, this was well worth the wait.