Saturday afternoon 15 March, much of Sydney experienced a thunderstorm although towards Baulkham Hills, it was quite significant. I went up to a lookout at Bella Vista overlooking the private hospital which provides me with excellent views towards the south and west and I did not need to do anything more.
Initially, I photographed a cell over Putty which appeared to be an LP cell but not feasible to chase given its location. That cell from a distance had interesting structure for a while but I decided after a number of photographs to let it go.
The cell to the west of Sydney was building and began to produce some good lightning strikes.
Initially there were a few within cloud flashes but as the storm intensified, cloud to ground strikes began to occur. Some of these had good contrasts.
Other strikes were spectacular as shown in this photo.
To get these, I am sitting down but I am zooming in. While it looks dangerous, I am still some distance from the storm. I am looking south west towards Blacktown and there was no rain where I was sitting.
Another one. This was a multiple strike over Blacktown.
At this time, the storm to the west was also intensifying and began to produce this type of lightning.
When this occurred to the NW of me, it was time to move under a shelter 50 metres away. I knew when to move to safety. There were a number of these strikes in the area but not constant.
The last one posted was a powerful strike and that did produce a strong thunderclap.
As the storm passed over, some very strong winds ensured and heavy rain but no hail. As the initial storm front passed over, this sort of lightning continued. There was one very close strike.
There was some 15 mm of rain within this area.
I did observe a light green tinge to the rain free base. No trees were brought down but the impact of this event were the lightning strikes, wind and heavy rain. I thought the lightning strikes were impressive.
I was careful in doing this and retreated to sturdy shelter close by following this strike. This is the last one I took in this sequence.
I was using two cameras to undertake this sequence. While video taping this and obtaining the lightning strikes, I was also using my DSLR Nikon to capture the cloud structures and bases as they developed.
This is a base that developed to the west captured on my Nikon camera.
The final photo of this post shows the base passing over me. I am under protective shelter now and this is the last photo I managed to take before the storm front passed through.
Some intense bolts there Harley, a local park in Parramatta provided an opportunity to get some shots of the approaching storm before the gust front came through after 5pm.