West Coast Lightning and Storm Photographs

I took the lightning photographs below at sunrise as a compact but intense hail storm approached Mullewa on Sunday 14th November 2003. Our chase actually started the previous day as we drove north to the Central West, where a very strong mid level disturbance interacting with a deep surface trough held promise of possibly severe storms. Severe storms did indeed develop, but much further north than we expected. As a result we missed most of the storms on Saturday and, anticipating more storms on Sunday, we camped near Mullewa. We were awoken by thunder at 3am as another line of storms moved in from the north.

After the above storm moved off to the south we continued chasing storms near Northampton and Horrocks, but the activity was so widespread it soon turned into a broad rain area. This prompted us to give up the chase and start the long drive back to Perth, but to our surprise we reached the edge of the cloud band near Eneabba and were greeted by fresh convection to the south of it. The chase was on again as we used dirt roads to get closer to a new storm which was developing rapidly north east of Badgingarra. The storm eventually grew to huge proportions, at it's peak featuring a huge rain free base, a ragged wall cloud which showed obvious rotation, and raised dust beneath the wall cloud region. The storm eventually dissipated at sunset allowing us to return back to Perth.