3rd October 2002

Driving home to Hamilton from Canberra we encountered a considerable amount of high cloud in the morning. By 12 noon we were at Bendigo and the temperature was a mild 20C. I caught on the radio someone from the BOM suggesting there could be a storm in the Wimmera later in the arvo if there was enough clearing of the high cloud. This prompted me to keep a constant eye on the sky for the rest of the drive home. Sure enough, soon after we reached Maryborough the sun was coming out in places and there was evidence of some mid level convection to the far west.
After leaving the ranges at Ararat some Cb development seemed to be occurring just west of the Grampians.
As we drove closer to Hamilton the west seemed to get blacker and blacker and we started to pick up static on the radio. On our arrival home, a quick hop onto the net showed a line of storms to the north and west moving basically SSE.
Not a huge amount of lightning occurred but it was spectacular with several Cg crawlers across the sky. Quite heavy rain also occurred for a short period.
Soon afterwards a second lot of storms moved over the area again with heavy rain and spectacular lightning.

Just on dusk another burst of convective storms developed in a line moving along the curve of a low in the SW of Vic and SE of SA. Storms then formed right along the trough line from the low up to the Mildura area. The lightning to my South-west was very spectacular and then at times I was viewing lightning from storms in all directions. We did receive a direct hit from one of these storms which produced pea-sized hail and once again a short burst of very heavy rain.

All photos copyright Tim Eckert.
Other images courtesy of Bureau of Meteorology and The Weather Company.

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