Australian severe weather season 2011/12

[Richard]

Too late to get the car in lady wonder what the roof on it looked like after that.

Thanks for posting Steven

[Nev]

A damaging white Christmas in Melbourne yesterday...

'Wild storms lash Melbourne' - ABC News
Updated December 25, 2011 23:00

Wild storms packing hailstones the size of lemons and strong winds have battered Melbourne during a severe thunderstorm. Roads have been flooded and some flights have been grounded at Melbourne airport.

The tornado hit Fiskville, 15 kilometres west of Bacchus Marsh, with reports its force picked cars up off the ground. It is believed another tornado also struck Melton, which was one of the worst hit areas. The weather bureau's Richard Russell says there was a tornado threat for about 20 minutes. "The report we had was from a very credible storm spotter," he told ABC News 24. "He reported that a car was blown off or across the road as it went through." ...

(more...)

Also check out the Sydney Morning Herald gallery and Herald Sun gallery.

[Richard]

Had some friends in eastern Melbourne who had the sky light blown out and heaps of water in the house,she reckons it was one of the nastiest storms they've had for ages

[NZstorm]

This clip documents how big those hail stones were in Melbourne on Xmas Day.

[NZstorm]

Pics of lightning and fireworks over Perth a couple of days back.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... skies.html

[Thunder]

Big hail!

And great photos, thanks for the link!

[jamie]

Wikid. Makes the fire works look small.

[03Stormchaser]

Collection of Photos here from Feb 21/22, Queensland
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 504&type=1

[mattyj46]

Some decent rainfall to come down here in Victoria after some decent heat over the weekend.

[mattyj46]

Melbourne Airport dropping 8c in three mins as a severe thunderstorms passes, 98km/h windgust also with 6.8mm of rain in five mins

[Tornado Tim]

Keep an eye on the SE part of Australia for some severe storms on a whopper of a trough.....

SLP Map courtesy of the BOM
Radar courtesy of Weatherzone AU via the BOM

[mattyj46]

Some amazing sheet lightning down here in Melbourne, was out to tea with some family and it just lite up the fairly dark room along the beach front, amazing.

[Nev]

High winds described as a 'mini tornado' sweeps through Townsville on Tuesday morning

[NZstorm]

Quote out of a story on the herald website regarding the Townsville tornado,

"The bureau was not describing it as a tornado as there were no reports of a funnel"

I doubt BOM made that comment, its to silly.

[Nev]

Yeah, totally agree. There's a similar misquote in this story...

Meteorologists, who said the freak storm could not officially be called a tornado as there was no funnel, recorded winds of up to 69 miles an hour [115 km/h], leaving thousands of homes without power.

The event occurred around 5am AEST and, with no moonlight, would've been very dark, so not surprised there are no reports of a funnel. The damage pics and reports of debris thrown in opposite directions suggest an EF2, i.e. winds of 180-220 km/h.

[Simon Culling]

The wind speed of 115km/h was recorded at Townsville Airport.

METAR YBTL 1907Z (On the 19th) AUTO 03041G60KT // // SCT009 BKN013 OVC029 25/25 Q1000

[Nev]

Much of Australia's warmest April spell in decades is about to come to an abrupt end.

Alice Springs has had 3 consecutive days above 38C and 5 above 36C, both firsts in 70 years of records. Alice has only recorded above 38C temps in April 6 times, all of which were in the last 10 years.

Birdsville in SW Qld was just shy of its April, 1968 T-max record by 0.8C, with 40.9C on Tuesday.

Sydney's Observation Hill recorded T-maxs above 25C for the first 7 days of this month, equalling April records set in 1977 and 1897. And with 25C forecast today, those records are likely to fall.

Melbourne had 5 consecutive above 25C days. The last time that happened was in April, 1955, when there were 7 consecutive days.

Hobart also recorded above 25C T-maxs for 3 consecutive days, its longest run since April, 1981.

Adelaide has had 4 consecutive days with T-maxs between 25.8C and 34.6C.

Source: Various Weatherzone/ABC reports.

[Nev]

Check out the cafe's amazing security footage in this report about a tornado that hit Perth, WA just after midday on Thursday...

[Orion]

How ghastly for those poor people.
Good coverage - thankyou for sharing.

[NZstorm]

Great report, looks like it was a decent tornado. I had a look back at the charts and while low level shear looked poor, the thunderstorm was on a frontal boundary with its top into a upper level jet.