Look out! I am armed and dangerous. After fifteen-odd years of chasing I now have mobile radar! It's quite unbelieveable even to me that it's taken this long, but I can be rather a cautious buyer, and with internet prices, I believe, already way too high, I was always reluctant to spend more. But spend more I did, and hopefully my storm pics will improve as a result.

So I was armed today with radar, but you wouldn't know it. Today's activity was lumbered with quite a bit of hype from forecasters with storms expected for much of SE Qld. Ultimately, what eventuated was necessarily disappointing with Brisbane receiving not a drop of rain. Those who ventured inland were mildly rewarded.

I started for Boonah, expecting the classic NE movement of our storms. Unfortunately, activity was very much confined to the ranges as storms drifted dead north.

Radar at 3:42pm

By the time I hit Boonah, I had little choice but to continue to Warwick, realising I would be playing catch-up, but also hoping that the diagonal rain band from Warwick to Kyogle might develop, putting me in the perfect spot. On the way, some back-burning turned the landscape into something a little post-apocalyptic.

Over Cunningham's Gap and some weak mammatus revealed itself.

It was fantastic to just be out on the open road with great views.

Radar at 4:24pm

There were some spectacular cloud-to-cloud (CC) lightning bolts, but as I got closer, giant CGs (cloud-to-ground) were landing within a few kms.

Unfortunately, the big bolts would land behind the camera, as they are wont to do, but seeing the red glow on the ground from whatever was struck was very exciting!

Hanging around attempting lightning photos around Nobby (yep, such a place exists 35kms south of Toowoomba) meant that the storm would be moving away from me, but that was the risk I took. As usual, after packing up the camera a couple of times, a massive bolt would land in front of me. Grrr. Making me hang around for another 15 minutes for nothing. Thems the breaks.

I eventually took off north past Toowoomba and Crow's Nest to try and get back in front of it. I succeeded in that much, ending up in Yarraman, but unfortunately there wasn't much left of the storm.

Radar at 7:06pm

The occasional bright flash of sheet lightning lit up the sky:

The lack of forks necessitated a little extra creative lighting.

And finally after hours of trying, I got me one fork!

Radar at 9:06pm

I hung around for another hour being very patient having driven this far, but finally gave up at 9:45pm. Two hours later I was back home.