On a very warm day in November 2017, storm towers were already growing and spreading north east toward the Sydney basin. The sea breeze pushed west, outflow from earlier storms over the mountains came back around, and a triple point provided enough convergence to fire another storm near Badgerys Creek. It dumped heavy rain and hail over Luddenham in a hurry. For once the chase was short — ten minutes from school and work, parked up, time lapse running, watching the new base form overhead. The cell built a black core on radar and put down hail under 2 cm, maybe up to 1.5 cm going by the hits on the car, before the chaser drove through it and filmed pea sized stones falling. Traffic was hopeless, so getting through to the new core forming further north was not an option, and the storm was collapsing anyway. Not a giant hail event by any measure, but a good example of how the setup around Sydney can switch a storm on with very little notice.
