Chase Reports

Summer 2002/03

10/01/03

27/12/02

22/11/02

21/11/02

Summer 2001/02

06/01/02 - Dust Storm Chase

Winter 2001

03/05/01 - A few funnels

Winter 2000

Winter - Some nice CB's

20/06/00 - Winter chase, 3 Tornadoes

Summer 1999/2000

20/02/00 - Thundery showers in Perth

Jan 4-14, 2000 Dust Devil Paradise

24/12/99 - Christmas Eve Chase

29/02/99 - Chase North East, nice storm with gust front

11th,12th,13th/12/99 - Chase's to Perth coast, Bindoon & Toodyay

02/11/99 - Nice chase to the wheatbelt with numerous CB's & some great mammatus

Winter 1999

10/06/99 - Perth Coast

Summer 1998/1999

27/01/98 - Great Dust Devil

28/11/98 - Dowerin Tornado & chase

Winter 1997/1998

17/04/98 - I chased & saw my first tornado, 2 supercells an awesome wallcloud & 1-2 inch hail

Winter 1997

05/09/97 - 5 tornadoes in WA in 36 hours

Summer 1996/1997

24/09/96 - A small funnel!

05/11/97 - Not a bad storm, another funnel

New Norcia Chase

All images © Inflow Images

Dust Devil & Dust Storm 27/01/98  

The last 5 months have been very quiet for storms here in WA, so it was a  nice surprise to come accross a Dust Devil and a Dust Storm whilst on a visit to my parents in Victoria.  There are lots of farms which grow wheat in the area.  After harvesting, there is no ground cover to stop the wind from blowing up the dust, so there is always many a willy willy, dust devil, and dust storms to be seen.  I do know that farmers are putting in a concerted effort to minimise this problem, as all their topsoil gets blown away.

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We were driving along when my brother brother said check out that willy willy.  I looked over and saw a pretty wide willy willy about 300 meters away.  There wasn't much dust in it so i was wondering what he was getting excited about.  A few seconds later I saw what he was really looking at, and it was a great looking dust devil a few meters from the road, which I couldn't see before.  My brother slowed down as i fumbled for my camera.  I couldn't get the automatic focus on the camera to focus, so i quickly switched to manual focus and took a few shots.  By then we were stopped, and i was about to get out of the car to go over to it, when it dissipated.  It was about 4 or 5 metres across at the base and was about 50 meters in height.  It lasted about 40seconds from when I first saw it to when it dissipated, but i don't know how long it had been formed for before i got there.  You might notice than even in the first photo you can see it had started to dissipate at the top.  It was not moving around very much, and i could have easily gone over to it had i been a few minutes earlier. (it would have been extremely dusty.  hee hee).  If you look closely at the 4th photo in the set, you may notice a second dust devil off to the right of the main one.
Further down the road, i also saw another one that was a lot taller, but due to the angle of the shot and the small amount of dust that it had picked up, the photo didn't turn out.  The photos of the first dust devil turned out great though, and it is a pity I didn't arrive earlier to get some more.

 

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