Weather patterns in a storm

Question

My house faces south east toward the ocean (about 10 km away) and we are near the top of a hill. The hill is a high point in Sydney, which has a large basin about 35 km (?) that slopes into the harbour. There is one ridge between our house and the ocean. Since we moved here, I have noticed that storms when they come from the ocean seem to "hang around" the top of the hill. This means our house gets a huge amount of thunder and lightning and last year blew up my cable TV. Does the weather on the other side of the hill "fight" with the big clouds and storms from the ocean at the top of the hill, stopping it from moving toward the harbour?

Answer 1

I am not sure, but I believe if you wrote to the Government Weather Bureau one of the scientists would answer you.

Site www.bom.gov.au

Answer 2

To a degree Yes!

Beacon Hill to Frenchs Forest are renound for this type of weather pattern.  

Answer 3

There is a common misunderstanding in associating storms with thunder. Of course, you can have a thunderstorm, but that is quite different from a storm at sea that may endanger ships.

If there is a storm, i.e. a strong low pressure covering a large area, the wind will pass over the mountains, etc. without being much affected by it.

But if you are talking about local thunderstorms, and while I live in Norway; your antipode, I can tell you that this is a typical weather behaviour for your region: The warm and moist air from the ocean comes over the land and is orographically lifted thus creating clouds and maybe rain. If the air above is rather cool, the lifting process continues and thunderstorms may form.

This is a weather pattern found in many places around the world. In the early 1900, the school of Bergen, a team of Norwegian meteorologists became famous from explaining a similar effect: the polar lows in north Europe.

But those orographic thunderstorms don't create much wind either than the gusty squalls ahead of the center of the storm.

On the other hand, regular low pressures may see the wind increase to maybe the double of the average as it tries to move across valleys that work as funnels. But that is something that you can only estimate yourself, knowing your local topography.