Storms formed late in the morning over the Tablelands before some large bases emerged over the Hornsby area in the warm humid conditions. The southerly seemed to hit this line around 1pm and the storms really took off in size and structure.

Unfortunately yours truly was participating in a soccer game so could not get any photos until half time. By this time the line had developed well and truly to the north of Sydney towards Gosford. Photo is from Hornsby Heights looking towards the Gosford cell. Note the nice lean to the cumulus towers indicating good vertical wind shear.

Our good friend and SSC founder Matthew Smith had a big day on Saturday. A very nice photographic storm formed about 5km away from where he was. Did I mention that he was getting married at the time...

Matt married Leanne at 3.30pm on Saturday. Fellow SSC'ers me (dann) and James along with defacto SSC'er Macca were part of the bridal party. We were having a superday when this storm blew up only a few kilometres away from where we were, having photos taken. Ironically we were without our cameras.

The storm had some pretty rapid inflow, which we observed for a good 50minutes at our location. We also saw pretty consistent rotation of the lower levels over the same period. As we left Parramatta lakes we were treated to this superb backend structure. (more here)

I managed to snap a few pics on my phone - but Jimmy managed to get a much better view of the storm from Schofields (more here)

Thanks to Ben, William and Con to scoring these ripper shots.

Whether or not this storm was a supercell is questionable. For my mind it certainly exhibited sufficient rotation for a suitable duration and was in a sheared environment that could sustain a supercell - but I have to sit on the fence - as there haven't been any reports or any real severe weather that one might associate with such a storm. Anyway - it was a lovely looking storm and a wonderful wedding present!

More images here 

Well sometimes the big days are the worst to chase. Way back in December - Matt and I traversed this epic state in search of the ultimate storm chase.Friday 21st December looked nigh perfect for storms of the variety that chasers dream about. Their was ton's of moisture over NSW, very unstable atmosphere, loads of windshear in the lower levels and drier cold air in the uppers.

However after 6 hours of driving to our target area, we found ourselves rained in, only about 50km away from where a suspected tornado touched down. However in the torrential rain that slapped up around at Ranking Springs, we really couldn't get anywhere in a hurry. We busted out.

However it seems some other holiday makers didn't. As the Males family was making its way to Broken Hill they encountered some very red storms, in the late afternoon near Ivanhoe. The selection of shots was taken with a mobile phone, but gives a tremendous experience of this red storm engulfing them on a lonely NSW highway.

Over 40,000 people lost power today as severe storms swept through Sydney. The storms formed due to a combination of an upper trough passing overhead with a surface Southerly change moving up the coast. With ample moisture still in the air, it didn't take long before severe storm warnings were put out by the BOM for flash flooding across Sydney, Illawarra and the Hunter. More reports and photos by clicking 'read more' below.

I went for a small local chase during my lunchbreak today. Started at a great vantage point on Galston Rd watching the rapid development to my south. Initially it was mostly dark bases moving steadily north towards me until just after Midday when one cell towards Baulkham Hills started to form a Shelf cloud on it's north flank. Over the next 20 minutes the shelf cloud went from a few fingers prodding out the front to a full blown thick layered shelf cloud. Quite a rapid transition no doubt helped by the strong outflow winds combined with the southerly forcing lifting as it moved north. Photo Sequence is below.

Eventually the shelf cloud moved nearly overhead. Time for me to move north as the first few cool gusts from the south rustled the tree leaves above. One more shot taken looking south.

I headed up the Old Northern Road to Wisemans Ferry where I watched as new development went up ahead of the main - now weaking a little - line. There was no chance for me to chase it north unless I wanted to drive the windy roads with no views to St Albans, so I called it a day (or long lunch?) and headed back home. Picture below of the storm approaching Wisemans Ferry followed by a shot of the new developing base in front.

The last few weeks have seen a marked increased in rainfall and overall storminess across NSW. A series of surface lows and upper troughs that have dragged in a ton of moisture from the Coral Sea, as well as from the tropical monsoon over the north of Australia. Some areas of Sydney saw widespread flooding - harking back to the floody years of the late eighties and early nineties.

While we have been copping the rain, inland NSW has been copping day after day of severe storms - the above image taken yesterday by Neil evening looking south west towards Breeza and Werris Creek, at the back of the S.E.S. Headquarters in Tamworth.

Not an Australian storm, but an amazing little clip of a storm in Chigago. Count how many times that one building gets struck in this video...

Had a brief successful chase this afternoon starting at Campbelltown and nearly doing a loop down to Picton/Appin/Bulli/Waterfall/Holsworthy and then back up to Galston.

Watched the earlier cells near wollongong go nuts from near Campbelltown. The NW flanking line started to get its act together with some crisp powerful updrafts however the bases were still quite high at this point. I opted for the coastal show at the start knowing the lightning and features were much better.

Those cells had some very intense, frequent lightning for quite a while until it started to gust out and the focus turned to the new cells developing on the earlier storms outflow.

Chaser convergence with Michael T was a nice surprise and as Michael said, we both agreed that the cells to the west were starting to become nice and organised. After dodging a few close flangs I headed up Heathcote rd to Holsworthy where a strong rippled base had developed and was ready to let loose a barrage of cg's, rain, hail and wind.

The wind was intense in bursts with branches coming down around my location. Hail was small however the lightning was frequent and constantly pounding all around. Heavy rain gave some flash flooding and it wasn't long before I was stopped by a tree across the road (I have a feeling its the same tree as your photo MT - I would have been around 6 cars back. I managed to get around it by driving onto the footpath behind a 4wd). After getting past this blockage I managed a awesome view of the back end structure a I headed north on the M7 back home.

Before turning onto Galston Rd I stopped at the Dural lookout and watched the beginning of the big cell over NW Sydney around 7pm (Rune - this is the view of the cell when the first strikes were coming out)

Storms struck Sydney this afternoon and with some very heavy rain fall and some areas getting 2-3cm hail.  James was out chasing this arvo and should have somethings to report soon, stay tuned!!!

I don't know if you are like me, but a day like today is when you start looking westward for some relief from the sticky weather.

I love the long humid days of late summer and early autumn, but its nice when a storm rolls through in the late afternoon to cool things off.

Today was one of those teasing days where the storms burst to life mid afternoon, and those people in Sydney could see the explosive cloud formations over the Blue Mountains, and later see the tops of the storms come stream through, blocking out the afternoon sun.

However some days the storms just stick to the mountains - like yesterday and today.

Above is a great pic of one of those explosive storms from the last few days, courtesy of our friends at blackheathweather.com

I suspect we will see a few more storms make it to the basin sometime soon...

After a quiet month, the last week has seen a return to storms around Sydney. Western Sydney copped another brutal storm than brought down trees and powerlines, leaving over 15000 people without power. This is the second big storm in a month to hit this area, after the hailstorm that left vast swathes of damage across areas from Penrith, Blacktown and Castle Hill. On the 20th storms swept across the basin. Matt was in position at Rooty Hill to capture the storms below, while the image above was sent to us from Andrew Johnson, who captured this epic landscape as the storms were moving offshore at Kurnell point.

More images here in Matt's 2008 gallery.

Although I managed to miss last Sunday's storms across Sydney I am happy to advise I was back home today to witness my first storm for 2008, and a good one at that.

I met Dann at his place and headed out towards Lithgow hoping to catch the earlier action over the Central Tablelands before heading back into the Sydney basin late afternoon for what we were both anticipating should be big. The earlier storms were terrible to be honest .. I was expecting a little more structure at the start but the combination of no wind shear, moist uppers and no cap meant that things got cluttered very quickly with no structure on show. After a quick u-turn we were heading back to the Bells and watched as the first large storm developed in front of us.

Whilst mesmerised by the dark menacing base rapidly sucking in scud cloud from all directions towards Bilpin we couldnt help but notice the intense updrafts going up to our distant south towards Wollongong/Appin. We toyed with the idea they were forming on the southerly however models had been hinting it was due later than what we were seeing.

We watched the Bilpin storm go from a black menacing base with wall cloud to a rain covered mess quicker than a lap around Mt Tomah Botanic Garden (which is not a great place for viewing storms). Our focus turned to the south with crisp updrafts now filling the southern sky. This storm looked intense and seemed to be heading north compared to the other eastward bound storms to our west.

We moved position to Windsor and enjoyed the outflow push out 80km/h winds around us. Lightning was intense with the most active part being the north eastern flank. Above us and to our east we noticed a small base that tripled in size as the outflow hit it. Within 20 minutes the small base was now enormous and dropping a barrage of lightning around us.

We picked up 1cm hail, strong winds that brought down branches and flash flooding on parts of Wisemans Ferry Road around Maroota however as soon as it had developed it had moved on towards the Central Coast leaving carnage behind.

Checkout more images from today in Matt's, James' and Dann's galleries.

A great looking left moving storm moving north ripped though the western suburbs of sydney today, not much damage was reported but it was fantastic structurally with powerful updraughts. The atmosphere was primed and all it needed was a trigger (southerly change coming in earlier than expected!) and plenty of moisture. James and Dann also chase today and should have some more info about this storm from the NW suburbs. It was great fun! plenty of development, some very heavy rain and strong winds as well as 1cm hail. There are more photos in the gallery under 2007 for now.

Storms hit Penrith today producing winds gusting up to 102km/h, which not unusual of course in a storm, but a storm that strong hasn't hit this area with that wind strength for some time. There were many tree branches down, as well as powerlines due to branches falling on them. Also there were pockets of flash flooding around and some property damage. 

Thanks to Jimmy D of australiansevereweather.com who took a couple of images of the storm (click on link image above).  We will get some more pictures up shortly.  

The target area was the Mudgee-Merriwa area today, shear was not very good but the instability was great, with some nice pulse storms expected, and hopefully something slightly more organized would develop. Highlights were 1cm hail just south of Mudgee, a very close clear air CG while driving and a half decent shelf cloud made the chase worthwhile. I struggled to get in front of the shelf cloud unfortunately and missed out on some better photos. The road travelled E or SE for a large section and the storm started to move north not north east and that signalled the end of the case. I got stuck in torrential rain with huge amounts of water on the roads, with plenty of aqua plaining keeping me on edge! all round an ok day, a few pictures in the photo gallery.