A MOTHER OF A CONVERGENCE     I had spent the night in Brisbane, and on heading back north to go flying I was impressed by the incredible CUs over the ocean. In autumn and winter a bank of early morning CUs out over the ocean usually means good flying. As the ocean is warmer than the land, it produces it's own thermals if the lapse rate is good. These CUs were so impressive that I began thinking that it could be epic. Where is my camera? Damn, I left it on my paramotor at home. By nine-thirty there still weren't CUs over the land, and around here in autumn that's not good. Hmmm, either the north-westerly is so dry that cloudbase is very high and the thermals haven't reached it yet, or it's a convergence out over the ocean. Those CUs do seem to be coming closer. Carl and I lob off at The Towers, and my hopes are shattered. The thermals are weak and not going high enough to get away, and the big bank of cumulus clouds over the ocean seems to have decayed as it came closer. I hang in there for an hour or so hoping for a good enough thermal to be worth committing to and going over the back. Finally, the best of the day thermal arrives and I'm climbing fast enough and high enough to go over the back. As I'm climbing thru 800 metres I notice that I've just passed cloudbase. The cloud a kilometer or two to the east is very low. The cloud above me is still well above. This could be convergence I'm thinking as I reach base at 1400m. Unfortunately the convergence is still far enough to the east over the tiger country such that I'm forced to fly south rather than east to the suspected convergence. I get low over Peachester and am scratching like mad trying to hang in there long enough to at least reach Buchy's place. Carl has also got away but has followed the more normal south-westerly line and is just about on the deck. I scratch past Buchy's place still at about 200-300 metres. Again I can't go in the direction that I would like to but I compromise and slide low over a pine plantation just maintaining height, and just within glide of a landing in amongst baby pine trees. Then still over the forest I hit a good thermal (where did that trigger from?) that takes me back to cloudbase. I look east at the vertical wall forming below me and realize that the convergence has caught up to me. YeeHaa! Now I have to go a bit further west and around the last of the tiger country. The convergence seems to be of the type that enhances thermal activity rather than be broard areas of gentle lift. It hasn't formed a long unbroken wall of cloud either. Instead it is forming fingers of cloud that reach out perpendicularly from the main cloud bank. So rather than go in toward what has become a rather dark and knarly main cloud bank I stick out near the tips of the fingers, jumping from finger to finger. I'm climbing at up to three m/sec, flying up around the sides of the fingers and getting up to four metres of sink in the gaps between them. Just past Woodford the gap between fingers is a bit too wide and I get drilled. I'm figuring out my landing while trying to maximise my distance when I hit the thermal/convergence that has come almost right to the ground under the next finger. I'm yelling and screaming as I climb out from less than a hundred metres above the farmhouse. YeeeHaaaaa! I'm now experimenting and exploring the convergence. If I fly too far west I fly out of the lift and hit a westerly headwind. Most of the time I have a good northerly tailwind that picks up and drops with the fingers. Other times I seem to hit bits of easterly wind. I figure the convergence is lifting air to the point where it becomes unstable and it is forming convection cells that create the fingers of cloud. I've seen these fingers occasionally on the edge of thunderstorm creating convergences and always dreamt of being there. Well here I am, and it's awesome! I'm kicking myself for not always carrying a camera. Going past Mt Mee the fingers break up and shorten and there is more of a sloping bank of cloud beside and below me. At one point I'm so far over the cloud bank that the only ground I can see is well to the west, yet I'm still in clear air. Just as I start to worry about keeping a safe landing in sight I get a little break in the cloud below and see some clear ground. Of course I'm always maintaining legal distance from cloud. I wouldn't dream of scraping thru the edges of the cloud wall and flying thru the wispy bits extending out from the tips of the fingers. Honest, cross my heart and hope to die. At this point I realize that the convergence could beat me by racing in front of me around the southern side of the Mt Mee range. So it's no more playing around and turning, from here on I'm only heading south or south-west. Once before I've been in a convergence on the lee side of the Blackall Range and have headed out in front of it only to hit another convergence head on that has come around the northern end of the range and come back south to meet itself. The clouds to the east are looking nastier all the time with big areas of rain under them. I head over Mt Pleasant and into the Dayboro valley only to discover that as feared the convergence has beaten me into the valley and is already up against the Mt Samson range. If I want to follow the convergence any further I'd have to go over mega tiger country. So after the last fifteen to twenty kilometers without turning, I push out of the convergence and into the south-easterly that is blowing up the valley to land just north of Dayboro. About an hour or more later big thunderstorms hit. There was local flooding and also flooding in Brisbane where two people were swept away and drowned. This was an unusual convergence formed when a low pressure area evaporated. The low had been sitting near Brisbane causing torrential rain in northern NSW, but only northerly winds on the Sunshine Coast. When the low evaporated the normal easterly airflow pushed in against the remaining westerly to temporarily cause awesome flying, later followed by record storms.