Weatherchase.net

2nd-4th August

Probably the most intense cold front of the winter moved through the Adelaide metropolitan area on Monday 2nd August. Some early morning pre-frontal thunderies were evident on radar off KI and the SE coast but these seemed to form into a band of heavy showers which moved through southern suburbs to start with around lunchtime. At about 3pm, the first band of heavy showers hit my house at Valley View in the NE suburbs with severe wind gusts and small hail. In this squall a wind speed of 83km/h was recorded at Parafield Airport.

After this main front had moved through, a massive field of colder air with associated coldies moved in towards Adelaide. I decided to drive south to get a better view of these cells and to take some photos. Approaching Old Noarlunga on the Expressway an almost guster-like feature developed on the front edge of a cell (first photo), this produced torrential rain and small hail again. I moved to the coast and parked my car overlooking the main beach at Maslins. Even though it was getting dark I got a couple of pics of the approaching cells. The last one photo below was a monster that had a large green core on radar but as it got to the coast it significantly lost intensity.

I left the beach then and headed to my parents at Mclaren Vale to check the radar. Spent the evening there watching as cells continued to move through the area. An intense cell produced a storm with several Cgs and hail back at Valley View and the NE suburbs at about 7.30pm.

It was getting quite cold too with the colder air moving through and the hail storms. Got down to 1.7C at Mt Crawford. Other significant reports included a small tornado at Elliston on the West Coast, Port Lincoln receiving its heaviest hail storm in 25 years, a 40m fallen gumtree blocking 4 lanes on Lower North East Road, and numerous damage reports to house roofs and trees in the NE and Northern suburbs. By 9am the next day we had received 20mm at home with over double that in the hills.

With hills areas quite saturated any further rain was going to start causing flooding issues. Sure enough as a wrap-around band moved up over us from behind the low, heavy showers started to cause problems in southern and hills areas. By 10.30am on Tuesday a minor flood warning was issued for the Upper Torrens catchment. Showers - tending to rain continued throughout the day over most of the hills and Adelaide areas and by 2.30pm a minor flood warning for the Upper Onkaparinga catchment was issued.

Radio reports of sandbagging in areas of Lobethal, Evanston, Cudlee Creek, and especially Verdun in the hills, where the Onkaparinga was rising rapidly and starting to cause major problems. The main road to Hahndorf was cut, as was the Onkaparinga Valley road.

At 4.30pm a Moderate flood warning was issued for the Gawler River and then at 9pm the flood warning for the Onkaparinga was upgraded to Major. Thankfully rain began to ease by the evening and by Wednesday morning, warnings were downgraded or removed, with thankfully not much damage to homes or land. The system raised Adelaide’s reservoir levels from about 58% to 98% in 3 days.

At my house we ended up with 72mm from the first 6 days of August. (other totals are below)

Late Tuesday afternoon I went out in the rain and took a few photos of the local flooding and high levels of the creeks.

The first photo below is of Dry Creek at Valley View - which normally hardly has a trickle of water. The next 2 photos are of the Torrens River at Paradise, running at a level probably not seen for at least 5-10 years.

The following 4 photos are of the normally placid Fourth Creek at Athelstone. If there were another couple of heavy falls after these photos were taken there could have been some problems for the neighbouring houses but thankfully this did not happen.

The next 3 photos are of localised flash flooding at Pedlar Creek, McLaren Vale. These were taken by my brother Peter Eckert.

And the last 3 photos were of the Gumeracha Weir, and the Torrens River near Gumeracha, taken by a customer at my workplace.