26th November 2000 - Thunderstorms Sydney
After a pleasant weekend in Melbourne in the sun (you should have seen my burnt nose) I flew back to Sydney on the 5pm flight and it soon became apparent that I would have something to take photos of on the flight back. Quite a few cloud masses were building over the Snowy Mountains and further to the North. As we approached Canberra a cell over the South Coast/Illawarra began to look particularly promising - see photo below.
The Anvil of a large cell over the Illawarra at around 5.40pm
Arriving at the airport I dashed home (my nose now blistering from the Melbourne sun - ouch!) to check the radar and was pleased to see another cell heading towards Sydney from Camden. I saved two radar loops during the evening (links below), unfortuntely there is a gap in the middle as I got busy taking photos.
Radar Loop 1 (Opens New Window)
Radar Loop 2 (Opens New Window)The Camden storm soon headed over Sydney - the Illawarra cell moved out over the coast and behind my building. I decided to wait for the approaching storm from the South West and hoped to use my vantage point to get some pictures as it moved to my West and North-West. I was not disappointed, the storm giving a spectacular light show with pleny of CG's. I had not had a chance to test out my new (second hand) SLR (Minolta SRT101 with 55mm lens) before from my balcony and was concerned by the amount of light in that area of Sydney. Using 100 ASA film I tried an F-Stop of 2.8 but these photos proved to be over exposed with exposure lengths of 15-20 seconf, but I had more success with the photos at F 5.6
Lightning taken from St Leonards looking toward Artarmon and Chatswood
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