SOTT EXCLUSIVE: Worst Supercell thunderstorm in decades hits Brisbane, Australia and injures 39 people

© Bureau of Meteorology

Radar image of the supercell storm that hit Brisbane.

or what! Only a week after one of the worst thunderstorms in years hit Brisbane, then another massive storm arrives. This time a destructive supercell thunderstorm hits Brisbane. Here is a report from PressTV:

Nearly 40 people have been injured after a powerful storm hit Australia's third largest city of Brisbane.

The storm struck southeast Queensland on Thursday, with winds moving over 140 kilometers per hour, before reaching Brisbane and injuring 39 people there.

Only 12 of those injured have been hospitalized. Reports say there were about 6,000 lightning strikes.

As a result of the storm, described as being the worst in decades, a number of houses, trees and cars were damaged, while several streets were also flooded.

According to Australian officials, some 100,000 homes have also been left without electricity.

Australian Minister for Energy and Water Supply Mark McArdle said staff members with electric power distribution company Energex and Ergon were working to restore power.

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From the , which is the local newspaper, we have this:

Dr Richard Wardle, weather services manager with the Bureau of Meteorology in Brisbane, says the storm's intensity and its direct hit on central Brisbane made it unusual.

"This is certainly at the upper end of thunderstorm strength. They are very rarely more severe than this," Dr Wardle told AAP.

"We will get supercell thunderstorms every year in southeast Queensland but what was unusual was that it hit the Brisbane CBD.

"We usually get these things in less populated areas, usually over the Darling Downs or the interior."

Giant hail was widespread, he said.

"We had hail that was up to tennis ball-size or softball size, and certainly golf ball-size for a large area," Dr Wardle said.

It was unusual in its severity, even for this meteorologist:

He said the storm was one of the worst he and his staff had seen.

"We have a group of people here that go back to the mid-90s and we don't recall a supercell thunderstorm impacting the CBD as this one did," he said.

"It's the first one to do so since about 1985 and of course we had The Gap storm in 2008."

The storm covered a wide area as can be seen in the chart below:

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Brisbane City Council’s list of suburbs affected by the storm.

Here is another YouTube video of the event

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Is nature making a comment to the global geopolitical maneuverings, as the first storm hit just after the end of the G20 summit, which Putin was wise enough to leave early? And then in case that message wasn't enough, Mother Nature does a repeat with a little more gusto? Perhaps it is time for Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to attend to local affairs, instead of playing along with the geopolitical game of the puppeteers who run the empire of chaos.

Here is a link to last week's storm: Severe storms and flash flooding cause chaos in Brisbane

Aeneas Georg

I'm a train manager and ticket inspector on international train routes in Europe. I've been reading SOTT since 2003 and first joined the editorial team in 2007 after realizing I had to do something about the deteriorating state of our world. I'm particularly interested in 'following the money' to track the machinations of the deceptive ones in high places. I suppose you could say I've taken my chosen profession to a new level, and now with SOTT I'm "inspecting the flows" of people and money in more ways than one.