Brisbane • Tue 4 Nov 2008

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I was reluctant to post any photos of this event as I missed most of the best lightning lying in bed. Not one of my most productive storm chases.

This storm actually occured in the early morning of November 4 after forecast storms for the previous day never eventuated. During the night several lines of activity tracked over the southern suburbs from the west. I got up at 1:30am for the first line which offered very little lightning.

The second line wasn't due for another hour or so, so I slipped back to bed (I hadn't driven far). When it arrived, I could see sheet lightning out my window with some lovely rumbles, which eventually became quite continuous, but after the poor performance of the prelude, it couldn't quite convince me to haul my butt out of bed a second time.

Nature punished me for my laziness with a few close cracks of lightning as I lay in bed, hoping it wouldn't do anything interesting so I didn't have to get up. Of course, these flangs were more than enough to get me going, but it was too late. It started pouring as I raced out the door. It seemed to be heading NE so I headed toward Cleveland hoping for a decent view, and ultimately ended up at Wellington Pt. Unfortunately, I was just playing catch-up and was never able to get back into a decent position for good lightning, rendering this dodgy middle-of-the-night drive completely pointless.

As the storm drifted way out to sea, the sky brightened slowly in preparation for the oncoming sunrise. In anticipation, I scouted around the Point for a spot, should I have the patience to actually wait till the sun rose. I stumbled across a massacre of dead fish that appeared to have been thrown in the water at high tide, but the receding water had revealed them in all their gutted glory.

Or maybe the fisherperson just tossed them unapologetically out in the open.

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