Weather tracker: Deadly storms wreak havoc across eastern Australia
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Region hit by strong winds, flash flooding and giant hailstones, causing one death and widespread power cuts. Severe thunderstorms have been wreaking havoc across eastern Australia this week, unleashing heavy rain, strong winds, flash flooding and giant hailstones.
In some regions there were wind gusts of more than 100mph (160km/h) and strong winds caused operational disruptions at Sydney airport as well as extensive damage nearby, including roofs being torn off buildings. An 80-year-old man died after a tree fell on his car in New South Wales, and several other injuries have been recorded. The storms also triggered lightning strikes, leading to widespread power outages that affected more than 200,000 homes and suspending rail services.
Hailstones associated with the storms generally reached up to 4cm in diameter across much of eastern Australia, although some areas in Southern Downs and Queensland reported hailstones as large as 10cm, larger than a tennis ball. These thunderstorms are among the most dangerous of the Australian summer season so far. They were triggered by a combination of cold air aloft interacting with a cold front and a low-pressure trough. This consequent atmospheric instability, coupled with saturated air over southeastern Australia, created a squall line – a continuous line of thunderstorms spanning hundreds of kilometres.
Squall lines are notorious for producing intense rainfall and strong winds, amplifying the destructive power of storms. Supercells – rare, intense individual thunderstorms with deep rotating updrafts – played a significant role in hailstorm formation. These updrafts repeatedly lifted hailstones into extremely cold air, coating them in more ice, and causing them to grow larger.
