Thunderstorms lash eastern Australia over the weekend

Widespread thunderstorms swept across eastern Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland over the weekend, bringing a great light show and useful follow up rain to many areas, although some regions were also lashed by severe weather.

On Saturday, a broad trough that stretched from eastern VIC up into inland QLD initiated thunderstorms from the late morning, which spread east across the three states into the afternoon and evening.

Coonamble felt the brunt of some of the first severe activity, recording a 96km/h wind gust and registering 23mm of rain in just 21 minutes (in an eventual total of 28mm), the best rain since December.

Frequent cloud-to-ground lightning was a feature of the storm line at times, with hundreds of thousands of lightning strikes recorded. Southeast of Dubbo, a man was tragically killed, whilst thousands of homes were left without power across NSW.

In some parts of the Hunter, small hail was also reported from the storms.

Some notable stats included: A 106km/h wind gust at Toowoomba at 1:20pm Golf ball size hail at Aspley (Brisbane northside) 2-3cm hail northeast of Boonah A 96km/h wind gust at Gatton at 2:07pm 73mm in 1 hour at Mount Tamborine (included 42mm in 15 minutes) 56mm in 30 minutes at Bundamba (Ipswich)

Looking further ahead, a lingering trough will bring isolated showers and thunderstorms over the next few days, mainly across inland/elevated parts of northeast NSW and Queensland. Activity may become severe again around mid-week.

Image 1: Thunderstorm Image (supplied) - October 22nd, 2018