Brisbane weather: Lightning strikes church in Warwick as storms approach

Lightning has struck a church in country Queensland as a huge, long line of slow-moving severe thunderstorms roll towards the coast from the Darling Downs.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Dean Narramore said a line of storms was moving slowly across the region in a northeasterly direction, but providing plenty of heavy falls.

The line of storms stretch from Springbrook Mountain "all the way to just south of Emerald," Mr Narramore said. 

"Maroon Dam (south of Boonah) has just had 74mm in an hour," he said. "And a lot of places are averaging 50mm or 60mm in an hour.

"Other places have had 50mm in half an hour. So there is some pretty heavy rain these slow-moving storms."

Mr Narramore said the line of storms was tracking towards the north to north-east and were "poking" over the Great Dividing Range south of Toowoomba about 5.30pm.

He said it was likely that heavy falls would peter out around Ipswich.

Firefighters were called to St Mary's Catholic Parish in Warwick just before 4pm after reports of a fire.

A Queensland Fire and Emergency Services spokesman told reporters crews arrived to find a lot of smoke coming from the building.

"It does look initially like it's like a lightning strike," he said, adding that crews on the ground would need to confirm the suspected cause.

Power to the church had been isolated as more fire crews raced to the scene.

An employee at a nearby cafe said a customer claimed to have seen the lightning strike, accompanied by an "awful, awful noise".

Mr Narramore suggested Toowoomba and Oakey would get heavy rainfalls and warned flash flooding was a real concern.

"With these places getting falls of 60mm to 70mm in a hour I'm pretty sure there is a good change of some localised flash flooding."

The storm was being pushed by weaker 20km/h to 30km/h summer winds "three to four kilometres above the ground".

"And at this time of the year the strong winds move further south, so we often get these slow-moving storms," he said.

Warwick received 43mm of rain in one hour as the systems hit.

"There's not an unusual amount of lightning," Mr Narramore said.

"It just looks like a typical storm with a fair bit of lightning, heavy rainfall and gusty winds."

In a severe thunderstorm warning issued by the Bureau of Meteorology, storms were forecast to affect Gatton, the area north of Toowoomba and Kooralbyn by 6.20pm.

Laidley, the area between Boonah and Beaudesert and the area south-west of Toowoomba, could be hit by 6.50pm.

With AAP