Broome, Western Australia - Really close thunderstorm.
Starting at 04:00 WDST on the 17th of December (19:00 UTC on the 16th of December), 2006

Another lovely wake-up call at 4am...actually 3am since we're on daylight savings...and the bonus is it's Sunday so who cares if I'm tired later in the day :P

This time there's not as much lightning but what we had was close and powerfull, I used movie mode on my Canon PowerShot A520. The A520 is a still's camera, not designed for movies - the optical and audio sensors aren't as sensitive to light as a real video camera and there's more lightning and thunder going on than what's seen/heard in the footage.

Majority of noise on these avi's is rain, lots and lots of rain - Broome airport officially recorded 75mm in about an hour or so I think.

WeatherZone (http://www.weatherzone.com.au/misc/breakingWeather.jsp#2) says "Storms lashed Broome early on Sunday morning, dumping 13mm of rain in just 10 minutes while generating 74km/hr wind gusts. In the 24 hours to 9am Sunday, Broome Airport managed to accumulated [sic] 74mm of rain, their wettest day since March 2004 and their wettest December day since 1993"

File name's give a good idea of what to expect, the FILES ARE LARGE and will take a while to download so be sure to DOWNLOAD THESE TO YOUR OWN COMPUTER BEFORE YOU WATCH THEM or the buffering will suck !

Anyway, enough talking, here's the avi's - speakers are essential (stereo headphones would be wicked for the thunder claps) ! :D

  • 1.67 megs, 1_rollingRumble.AVI (~4:30am)
  • 1.39 megs, 3_bounce.AVI is called bounce because the strike was so close, the thunderclap was so loud...I bounced, hahaha
  • 3.29 megs, 6-strikeRumble.AVI is at about 5:30 (6:30 WDST), from the behind the front door or the camera would get wet, nice ground arc with accompanying dull clap :)
  • 2.56 megs, 2_0740rain.avi is at 7:40am (08:40 with daylight savings), rain's coming in hard and fast and you can't see the sun
  • 2.07 megs, 4_flashRumble.AVI is a fairly bright flash and nice rumble afterwards
  • 1.13 megs, 5_rummbbbllle.AVI no, this is not the sound of a plane taking off, it's constant thunder
  • 3.59 megs, 7-flashyFlashFlash.AVI is nothing special just showing how bright some of the flashes were in the later part of the storm

    Only problem with storms being right on top of you - a) they better not blow up the Triple J transmitter or I'm gunna be spewing, b) I don't have a laptop so I was trying to wait for a gap in the lightning long enough to turn the machine on, check radar, synoptic and wind speeds, then turn off and unplug the machine to avoid having it blown up by any power surge !

    A few stills photo's and images sourced from WeatherZone and BoM    ...
    More photo's available at http://www.vk6ksj.net/gallery/rcs171206

    7:45am (8:45 WDST), what a beautiful sunrise :P
    Have a look at 2_0740rain.avi for a better idea


    No rain happening at 4:30eh ? hahahaa :P


    8am looking like this...


    Infrared animation up to 7am, courtesy of JMA


    Lightning radar at 2:50am


    I could forecast "possible thunderstorms" until April but WeatherZone is forecasting "thunderstorms" for Tuesday so lets see what happens :)

    Cheers
    Kai

    All movies copyright Kai - VK6KSJ, please respect my intellectual property - don't download these movies and then claim them as your own !