WIDESPREAD RAIN AND STORMS IN THE SE QUARTER OF QLD AND NE NSW
OCTOBER 27, 1999

A surface trough combined with an upper level system brought widespread rain and storms to the SE Quarter of QLD on Wednesday October 27.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning electrical storms tore through QLD/NSW border areas.  Houses were unroofed, trees uprooted and buildings damaged at Texas from one of these storms.  The storms were EXTREMELY electrical, with the SE QLD lightning tracker picking up over 100 Cg's (cloud to ground strokes) every minute for quite some time.  There was even a report of Ball Lightning from these storms!!!!

Between 5 and 6am a very strong storm developed east of Stanthorpe, and had a very large are of max intensity (100mm/h + rain rate) on radar.  This storm could have contained very large or copious amounts of hail, but fortunately it moved through largely unpopulated areas and no damage has been reported.

After the events overnight there the chasers of Brisbane were excited to say the least!  And looking at the morning satellite pictures watching showers and storms developing over the inland, severe storms were looking likely during the afternoon (early morning storms over inland southern QLD and Border Range areas are a good sign of severe thunderstorms in the afternoon in SE QLD).  Unfortunately these showers and thunderstorms quickly flattened out into areas of rain by late morning.  Brisbane Storm Chasers Ross Portas, Ben Quinn and Jason Smith were out chasing, but unfortunately it rained in the chase area most of the day, so it was very much a bust chase.

Widespread thunderstorms did develop NW of Brisbane during the afternoon though.  No damage or severe weather was reported from these storms.  They were however very electrically active, with the lightning tracker setting a new record (since we have been following it - 2 storm season now) of over 800 Cg's in a five minute period.  This is obviously a massive amount of lightning.

These showers and storms continued in parts of the Wide Bay and Burnett and Capricornia areas overnight.  A thunderstorm in Bundaberg dumped 120mm in one hour, with 30mm of that falling in ten minutes.  Bundaberg had 160mm to 9am Thursday, shattering their monthly rainfall of 69mm for October.  One unofficial rainfall figure from these storms was 346mm to 9am Thursday, with several others in excess of 200mm.  This rainfall caused substantial flash flooding in pats of Bundaberg, with one resident reporting 2m's of water entering her house.

There were other large totals to 9am Thursday in SE QLD, including 90mm at Beerburrum, 71mm at Warwick and 70mm at Cape Moreton.