Forecast said it will be stormy weather so I hoped we could go on a good chase and it ended excelent.
CAPE between 400 and 700 J/kg with Lifted Index between -2 and -3°C were good enough for getting showers or storms:

First showers and storms were in the early morning in Friuli. Around 12am at the north coast of Adriatic Sea a squall-line has appeared which was progressing to the E-NE. Here is a radar of this line (Time: 10:25 UTC):

Slovenian radar "Lisca" shows it like this:

We quickly dispatched towards Prosecco in Italy, from Dane pri Sezani we already saw pretty stormy and dark sky towards NW (Time: 11:40 UC):
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When we arrived to Prosecco we have already seen a squall-line towards Grado (Time: 12:15 UTC)
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Cloud base was pretty low, the west part was just few hundred meters above the sea. There was also a chance even for a waterspout, but we haven't seen any (Time: 12:15 UTC):
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You can see this storm on radar image, also there was a pretty strong cell west from Istra coast, radar reflectivity shows almost +65dBz (Time: 12:00 UTC):

On Lisca radar it looks like this (Time: 12:20 UTC):

This map shows accumulated lightning strikes from 11:10 to 12:08 UTC on this area:

We decided to go closer, so we went towards Sistiana. It was more and more dark and greenish while we were approaching the Sistiana and the downpour with hail has been even stronger (Time: 12:22 UTC):
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The view towards Sistiana was really magnificent, so unbelivable nice colours (Time: 12:22 UTC)
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The sky turned pretty dark (Time: 12:23 UTC):
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'Cb mam' clouds were forming extraordinarily fast (Time: 12:23 UTC):
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Sky becomes scary, it turns even more greenish and dark, 'Cb mammatus' appears in "whale's mouth" shape (Time: 12:24 UTC):
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A gustfront is progressing towards East pretty fast (Time: 12:25 UTC):
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We went off the highway near Sestiana and looked back to the South. You can see how close to the ground the cloud base was (Time: 12:27 UTC):
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This radar shows how the downpour with hail reached us on the road between Aurisina and Sistiana, our location is marked with blue dot (Time: 12:30 UTC):

The cloud base above the sea, this is the view from coastal road 2km SW from Sistiana (Time: 12:37 UTC):
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It was heavy raining (RR from 100 to 150mm/h) with hail ~1cm in Sistiana, there was a lot of water on the road. Then we turned back Prosecco in heavy rain, where rain stopped for awhile, but looking towards Grado shows that the new cell is coming, you can see a nice 'Cb arcus' cloud (Time: 12:58 UTC):
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Radar image shows how strong was the cell few kms away from the coast (Time: 13:00 UTC):

Few minutes later we can see a nice fallstreaks of rain with hail in it (Time: 13:03 UTC):
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Not even 10 minutes were over and the new downpour with hail reached us (RR was more than 150mm/h) (Time: 13:11 UTC):
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Radar image shows another strong cell approacing the coast from the gulf... (Time: 13:15 UTC):

The heavy rainfall ended in few minutes, but we have already seen a new cell in the gulf which was progressing pretty fast towards us (Time: 13:16 UTC):
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Another downpour with hail, water is everywhere (Time: 13:21 UTC):
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The visible satelite image shows how squall-line looks from above, the "MCS - Meso-scale Convective System" has been formed (Time: 12:30 UTC):

There was a lot of lightning strikes from 12:00 to 13:00 UTC:

Here is a sounding map for Udine.

Then storms went inland over SW Slovenia and Istria. Accumulated rain was around 150mm in just few hours in the late afternoon around the hill Slavnik or even more somewhere near by.
This radar image shows how strong convection resulting in orographic lifting over the southern slope of the hill Slavnik which is marked with blue dot (Time: 17:10 UTC):

Really unbelivable how powerful orographic lifting was and for how long it lasted, one storm by another... (Time: 18:10 UTC):

Another radar image shows where the beginning of orographic lifting was. With the combination of strong W-SW wind in upper air the rain went further into the inland (Time: 18:40 UTC):

Radar accumulation shows where was the maximum rainfall from 13:00 to 18:00 UTC:

This is an accumulation of lightning strikes in this area from 17:50 to 18:48 UTC, new cells/storms were forming also in the NE Italy:

When we were arriving back to Fernetici we have seen a nice 'Cb arcus' of the storm which was on the coast before and now progressing into inland (Time: 13:41 UTC):
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In the evening we went on a short chase near Obrov and Podgrad where we noticed few cms oh hail on the ground near the village Hrusica (Time: 20:11 UTC):
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There were big heaps of hails near the road (Time: 20:12 UTC):
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When I arrived back home there was a storm few minutes after the midnight (RR was around 75mm/h), but no hail included. I marked Zirje with blue dot (Time: 22:30 UTC):

Luckily I managed to take a pic of lightning strike (Time: 22:34 UTC):
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With this shot I opened a new season of lightning chase, I have never caught a lightning so early in the spring.

All images in this chase log are also in my galery.

Radar, satellite and other images are taken from websites: ARSO, OSMER, NASA, Wetterzentrale, Weather Online and Alpenflugwetter.com.

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