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The day began, for me, with a lukewarm coffee and stale toast; the consistency of steamed cardboard with the taste not far removed. Still, what more could I ask for in a diner that still advertised TAB cola and featured an entire wall that was montaged with cigarette posters from the sixties and seventies. What was I thinking... I found myself drawn to the congesting cumulus nestled over the tropical islands featured in the pictures rather than the semi naked women who looked like she had never partaken on a tobacco product in her life

The coke clock hanging on the wall read 8:40am. Was it to be trusted? The northerly wind was gently wafting through the central Dubbo diner- mixed food smells of fried eggs and coffee were only broken by the buzz of the occasional stray locust. The day looked promising, widespread instability, upper cold air trough, warm surface temperatures, and the fact that most of NSW had been covered with abundant levels of moisture - a rare scenario for early December. I had 350kms in front of me - my destination, the quiet town of Merriwa sitting in the upper Hunter Valley. The reason - a chaser convergence between myself and regular chase partner Mr James Harris. After 3 days of solo chasing, company would be welcome and enjoyed.

I arrived at Merriwa at 12 noon, and already the sky was filled with masses of convective development. Already the day had surpassed yesterday, where the mid to upper levels of the atmosphere were just to warm for anything interesting to happen. James and I met and marveled at the promising panorama that surrounded us. From the north to the southeast rock hard boiling updrafts encircled us. Even in the distance, way off to our east we could see that storms had formed west of Gloucester over the Barrington Tops. This area is a hotspot, on par with Dorrigo on the NSW Mid North Coast and the Border Ranges between NSW and QLD. It consistently fires off the first storms of the day or the only storms of the day when the rest of eastern NSW is being ruled under very marginal conditions.

Already two storms had formed to our northwest and was providing a particularly tasty show coming close to lunch time.

The structure was very crisp on the backend, albeit fractionally dry in the lower levels. Moderation rotation was evident in this early development even thought the updrafts weren't nearly as sustained as they needed to be. The storm quickly gusted out and shot off to the east.

During the mid afternoon most of the development was still a fair way off. Things were thickening up to our south over the famous Wollemi. We decided that our target of the western hunter valley was still the place to be, so we took a time-out the Merriwa pub. An underwhelming place - grand from the outside - dull from the inside...and the beer was a fraction flat too.

After a comprehensive thrashing of James in a jovial game of pool, I suggested that maybe we should head out of town to the elevated plains of the upper Hunter - in anticipation of the glorious storms to come. James suggested east, I suggested west, and not wanting to dent his confidence further, east it was.

What a fortuitous decision that was - the more we saw of the mid afternoon sky, the more we realised that things weren't happening quite as we thought. We knew the hunter traditionally fires late, so no need to panic...yet. However as we moved into the greater Hunter Valley we were concerned with the lack of moist looking development.

To our south a fairly persistent multicell had been putting up some impressive pulses, somewhere over the Putty ( we figured). Overlooking a lush green field, we decided that as it moved off the rugged ranges into the lower Hunter Valley it might give some life to the dry looking sky that haunted us.

As we neared the dogged multicell, a discussion was revisited on the nature of ‘the supercell'. Most of the day we were comparing every storm to a supercell - mostly to hone in on what is the essence to this most prized storm. We had said, many times, that this huge storm, the multicell, was in fact a multicell, because of the pulsed nature of its structure - and base features. However we noticed that for over 30 minutes no new pulse (fresh updraft) had formed on our multicell. Instead an impressive curved updraft had been feeding up into the heart of the storm. Rotation was evident especially just about the base of the updraft, but not the far lower levels of the updraft itself. It was littered with tiny, boiling updraft bubbles indicating its very explosive nature. This was very interesting turn to our day.

A neck jolting glance to our northwest - back over the calm towns of the Upper Hunter where we had previously been (and drank) - and we were greeted with the most sizable updrafts of the day. Brilliant, crisp explosions of cloud were reaching out over our north western sky, scratching the top of the atmosphere. I lamented that perhaps we should have stayed in the comfort of the Upper Hunter but James affirmed that this was the right place to be. James had never been more correct...

That ‘multicell' now dubbed "...something like a supercell" was hot-tailing its way to the ocean. A thick deck of strato-cumulus stopped us from obtaining a better vantage point of this storm. Only later were we to know that this storm had dropped 7cm hail across much of the far lower hunter and central coast areas.We turned west - our current position was north of Cessnock. With the sun getting low in the sky we were faced with a completely featureless black base.

The sun was sharply defining the western rim of the storms body. Two things caught our attention - namely two wall clouds. Wall clouds are a sign of strengthening updrafts trying to draw up more air into the storm - it starts to pull up saturated air.They look like smaller clouds attached to the flat base of a storm - hanging down and usually swirling about. It's a sign of a very strong updraft. The wallcloud to the east was very ragged - looking like fingers reaching down.

We could see that some precipitation was undercutting underneath this wallcloud. To the far west, a more cylindrical wallcloud had formed; smooth and pointed with the appearance of a spinning top. It wasn't as big but there was some very nice scud cloud sitting below. Unfortunately we were moving at the time - so we couldn't record any of this. We moved west to the far western wallcloud and waited.

James and I stopped on the side of a road - in furious breath - adrenalin pumping - we had a storm... and we were in perfect position. Initially we commented that the storm was nicely structured. The sun had retreated briefly behind some cloud which allowed us to see the isolated base with the pointy wallcloud sitting below. This part of the storm sat quite separated from precipitation that was falling adjacent to. We captured some video and photos, both enjoying this phase in our chase. I hurriedly announced that I wanted to be closer.

The road we were on was unsealed but I could see that a just down the hill the land seemed to clear to flat vineyards. James said he would follow in a couple of minutes.Jumping in my car I headed west down the road. With the skill and precision of a rally driver I negotiated the car down the gravel track, grapevines in bloom, leaning over the road, speeding past at a high rate. The Corolla bucked and dipped as it went through lowered creek crossings, the tyres crunching on the rusty red earth as it bobbed and weaved along.

The dull roar of the wheels on gravel was replaced with the distant hum of rubber on asphalt. I was delighted to see the land, as promised, open up and clear, full with the rich fruit that I would probably consume in liquid form sometime in the near future. I parked the car on the side of the road, whipped out the camera and scrambled over to an open vineyards and looked up...

There, above me was the most violently rotating storm I had ever seen. Boiling, bubbling cloud was swirling around a pillar updraft smooth and laminar on the northern side and ferociously dynamic on the southern. A sweeping collar cloud and also formed around the main bulk of the updraft. Constant thunder could be heard booming from the storm and the updraft was occasionally being lit up from the inside with strobes of lightning. The updraft towered and twisted into the main bulk of the storm. A silver Subaru pulled up adjacent to me; James bounded out of the car beaming with delight. Snapping away, trying to point all of our lenses at the storm and capture every inch of this rotating monster - we realised that a storm like this does not happen every often.

The storm was a LP (Low Precipitation) Supercell - something that is rare for Australian conditions. The storm had formed over the Brokenback ranges which is an interesting hotspot for storm chasers on the NSW Central coast. James had captured a supercell at this precise location on March 10th 2003. He had made the observation that because of its location it often is the meeting point for a warm, humid north-easterly sea breeze, a dry, gusty north westerly pushing through, and prevailing storms moving from the south-west that have formed on the 500m elevations of the ranges behind

The storm was pushing through very quickly, given we were so close to it, it seemed to roar on top of us instantly. Big inflow tails had formed on the east (feeding in to the lower levels) and the northwest (feeding into the lower to mid levels) and were increasing very quickly. The surface air temperature was extremely humid - although I had no measuring devices to capture this - it was very, very sticky indeed. The mesocyclone had increased in size, but the tight rotation that we saw initially was not evident now - the areas immediately above the mesocyclone were far more dynamic.Occasionally we would get sprays of drizzle that saturated everything - but the storm was now slipping away to our east. The base was now so close it was obscuring the rest of the formation. We had seen some hailshafts that were wrapping about the southern part of the storm.

We figured these to be south of Cessnock somewhere so we moved to investigate. As we journeyed through the main area where the precipation core had been we could see some very nice hail drifts, but in very localised areas. We saw stones 2-3cm but stones as big as 5cm were reported from this storm to the ABC the following day. Lots of small areas of debris (broken tree brances, trees stripped of leaves) were evident, but in a fairly unorganised pattern suggesting downdrafts and hail damage. Heading east along Mc Donalds Rd were drove through brief areas of flash flooding, which James's AWD handled very nicely. The Corolla was far more nervous ploughing through 30cms of water and mud...

We had actually moved south and behind the storm, and started to set a much better understanding of the backend structure as the storm moved over us. The updrafts at this stage were quite maritime in their appearance - moist and soft, without too much force. Hail was being trailed from the backend of the storm.James pushed further east while I stayed to capture the backend structure. A large inflow flank was continuing to build to the north - very similar to those I have seen captured by American chasers. The updrafts had again changed to an extremely crisp, dense, boiling form. James and I met up again overlooking an open vineyard, but this time looking eastward. We marveled as the tail explosively morphed from a messy tail cloud to a vigorous, billowing wedge.

Huge rock hard updrafts were now dynamically feeding into the storm with jaw-dropping speed. Within minutes the storm had changed from a dying, top heavy storm, to a vibrant beast. It was stunning, for the second time in 30 minutes to witness.

James had setup some timelapse - I decided to move a little further to the south - perhaps to give myself a better view - I am not sure exactly why. I ended up on the outskirts of Kurri Kurri. The storms had been curving north-east in its movement while everything else in the Hunter Valley was headed east-south east. Eventually those crisp monster updrafts that we had spotted much earlier in the Upper Hunter had formed into storms - though there were more your garden Decaf coffee variety - no brewing Espressos here. These storms T-Boned the supercell and it died. My view was obscured very quickly as more and more development exploded behind the supercell .

The storm was now long gone, and James had informed me that we were to meet at Mc Donald's for some food and some battery recharging time. Again it might have been the adrenalin, but I decided that the best way to Cessnock was through the Cessnock State Forest on the Old Maitland Road. Not having a map, nor an idea where the road would take me, I assured myself that all our decisions made today had come off - and surely the Cessnock State Forest would actually lead to Cessnock. Luckily it did.

GFS had forecasted a upper cold pool to move through after 10pm - so were expecting a light-show later that evening. We perched ourselves over on a hill north over Cessnock, beckoning something to develop which is did very briefly. The heavens opened up and we caught a couple of very impressive CG's. However the cold pool hadn't really energised the nightlife of the Hunter Valley like we thought it would.

Well in summation - December 13th will forever (in our minds) be remembered as the day that we were graced with a true meteorological rarity. Its not often you see structure like this in Australia let alone a powerful rotating LP Supercell that you would often find gracefully ploughing across the plains of the USA.

Photogenically it's the best storm we have ever photographed. Never have we witnessed such a dynamic and fluid setup that changed so incredibly quickly. It's a day that brings a smile to your face the following morning when you wake; a day that when you close your eyes the rippling appearance of the updrafts seem to be burnt on the inside of your eyelids; a day that in the simple recounting of the story energises the same pulses of adrenalin; a day when it really occurs to you how special it is to share the same experience with another; and a day that humbles you and sits atop of those ‘prized' chases that really only matter to you in your own reckoning.