2 January 2011

The New Year's Day electrical storm

| johnboy
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photo by john lafferty [Photo by John Lafferty]

Last night was as good a show of the Sturm und Drang as you could possibly hope for.

Readers are sending their photos in so if you’ve got one send it to images@the-riotact.com

(Slideshow below thanks to “alloneword“, and John Lafferty)

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Holden Caulfield12:26 am 04 Jan 11

Check the serenity!

Canberra Times had an article about it today. Seeing it happened early Sunday morning I’m not surprised it didn’t make it into the Sunday paper.

They published an article about it today, featuring a photo taken by my partner:

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/capitals-south-thunderstruck/2038202.aspx

😀 Brilliant photos, John – thanks!

@ #3

You’ll find that this is called sheet lightning and is cloud to cloud and not cloud to ground…

Storm…. lol

I just went hunting to see if there was any information about what happened to the tv channels last night – still nothing. The only information/speculation I could find was on this (The Riot Act) site. I did miss the tv news this evening tho – so it may have been covered there.
Unbelievable that Canberra Times, SMH etc. have nothing in their internet content about it.

The excat same storm came travelling down to the south coast at 2.30am this morning. Waking everyone in the house up. But when shit hit the fan, I was like eh, another thunderstorm, I shrugged and resumed zzz’ing.

GottaLoveCanberra5:34 pm 02 Jan 11

Blackout while watching Waterworld? Consider it divine intervention! =)

Thunder and lightening very intense over Weston Creek for about 90 mins from 12.30am, accompanied by intense rain. The official BOM figures only showed 5mm of rain at Canberra Airport and 11mm at Tuggeranong, but Weston Creek was definitely much higher (a neighbour’s rain guage showed 26mm).

Great photos!

There was a huge power spike sometime just before midnight(?) that seemed to take out all the digital channels on the TV – I was watching Waterworld at the time (what an ‘awesome’ movie!) – and this was before the lightning had even reached Canberra.

I sat out under the veranda and watched these two storm fronts pass through, and I don’t think I have seen so many groundstrikes in a storm like this before.

georgesgenitals3:25 pm 02 Jan 11

I found it amusing that the Bureau of Meteorology withdrew it’s storm warning at 9.41pm last night…

Thanks for the photo complements. I posted some more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/25223017@N00/sets/72157622921790403/

Driving southbound on the GDE at about 12.15 am and I noticed Telstra Tower was completely blacked out then headed for Tuggeranong was like driving into a scene from Armageddon – wonderful and far far better than any New Years Eve Fireworks. Mt Taylor seemed to take a hammering with multiple direct hits from the lightning.

Dacquiri… In an “emergency” I tune to 666 am for all the local news.

Great photos.

Mr Gillespie12:23 pm 02 Jan 11

Dacqiri (6) WIN News are taking another extended holiday, plus they never show a bulletin on the wankends anyway (with the exception of the 2003 Firestorm). The local news drought here is getting more and more severe and bugger-all seems to be done about it.

Incredible photos – well done. Around Urambi Hills it seemed to be very focused – double thunder and lightning etc. Most the carnage started around 0110 and finished 30 mins later. I wish I had the sense at the time to get out the video and film the storm.

Oh man this storm had war of the worlds written all over it. My whole house was lit up with light every 2 seconds yet i couldnt hear any thunder/rain. Was hard to get to sleep :/

GardeningGirl11:10 am 02 Jan 11

Great pics!

I tried grabbing some photos of the light show last night, but they all appeared to be ‘behind’ the clouds with not many proper strikes. Great photos in the album tho.

great photos!

Hells_Bells749:25 am 02 Jan 11

Very nice pictures. Thanks!

Lightning may’ve hit Telstra Tower or something similiar, was listening (or complaining about the repetition at least) to the party mix on the radio late last night and then the next moment I wasn’t. AM was still okay, but no FM on any of our radios. Not sure when it came back to us, if it did, I gave up and put a DVD on.

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