Brisbane storm: Bureau of Meteorology warns more on the way after early morning light show
Updated
South-east Queensland residents woke to loud cracks of thunder early this morning, as a band of storms moved across the region, delivering almost 39,000 lightning strikes.
The storms developed over Toowoomba around midnight before moving towards the coast by about 3:00am.
The one-hour light show began about 2:00am.
Many people wrote on social media that they were woken up by the storm.
"Well that was impressive for 2.30am," Rosemary Allie in Manly West said.
"Now can someone take Thor's hammer off him, some of us wanna [sic] sleep and not listen to the crazy border collie bark at the thunder."
Power was cut to more than 7,000 homes, but most have now been restored.
But Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) forecaster Sam Campbell said the storms delivered only about 2 to 10 millimetres of rain.
"There was a bit of rainfall in it. They would've been short, sharp and intense as they moved through," he said.
"But none of those storms were anywhere near what we'd class as severe, so we just watched them as they went through."
The BOM has warned there is the chance of a thunderstorm again today in Brisbane, possibly severe.
How lightning strikes are measured
Danny Donald from Energex said there were 39,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes amid the storms.
About half of those were on the Gold Coast, another 3,000 west of Brisbane and only 1,500 in the capital.
"That's way up there," Mr Donald told 612 ABC Brisbane.
"It certainly put on a spectacular show."
Energex contracts Weatherzone to count the strikes.
Mr Donald said Weatherzone had 10 aerials in the south-east that pick up "crackles" from each strike.
"Every single lightning strike has its own signatures," he said.
"They send out their own electromagnetic pulse.
"Through the hyperspectral trigonometry, we can tell where the lightning struck within 200 metres.
"That allows us to know where it has been intense and where there may be damage to the network."
Topics: storm-event, weather, disasters-and-accidents, storm-disaster, emergency-incidents, emergency-planning, brisbane-4000, ipswich-4305, qld
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