Lightning strikes twice: Forecaster warns Brisbane will cop repeat of Sunday storm

The early November heatwave has ended but more wild storms are expected to strike Brisbane in the coming days, with hail, heavy rain and strong winds forecast.

Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Pieter Claassen said Brisbane residents should brace for a repeat of Sunday night’s storms, which delivered 200,000 lightning strikes and cut power to more than 19,000 households.

The most severe storms were expected on Wednesday and were tipped to bring hail, strong winds and up to 50 millimetres of rain in some suburbs.

“There’s certainly a risk of seeing a repeat of [Sunday] night’s weather over the next few days. We have a high chance of showers and storms around the next few days, during the afternoon and evening periods,” Claassen said.

He said warmer nights would continue, with minimum temperatures of 22 degrees. The maximum daily temperatures were expected to remain about 30 degrees for much of the week – about 2 degrees above the long-term November average of 28 degrees.

The good news? The rain was set to bring reprieve from the extreme humidity, although not immediately.

“It’s likely to be quite humid for the coming days,” Claassen said.

“In terms of temperatures, we’ll be closer to average for this time of year … but what’s not average is that humidity.

“It is especially humid at the moment.”

The average 3pm relative humidity for November is 55 per cent. On Sunday, the relative humidity in Brisbane was 70 per cent.

The conditions have been on par with those experienced in the wet tropics. On Monday morning, the dew point – a more accurate measure of the humidity – in Brisbane was 22 degrees, the same as it was at Darwin Airport.

A lightning strike over Brisbane during thunderstorms on November 10.Credit: Michael

Wednesday should be a turning point, Claassen said, with slightly cooler temperatures and milder conditions forecast for the weekend.

“From Wednesday, we’re still likely to see afternoon showers and storms, but the risk isn’t as great,” he said.

“Finally, towards the end of the week, we’ll start to see those showers and storms ease.”

Brisbane’s southern suburbs and Logan and Ipswich were hardest hit by Sunday night’s storms.

“Lightning strikes will hit the network and they’ll cause an outage, but there’s not usually a lot of physical damage and we can remotely switch them back on a lot of the time,” Energex spokesman Danny Donald said.

He said Energex had recorded more than double the number of lightning strikes over Brisbane so far this storm season, compared with the same period last year.

“We have had more than 2 million lightning strikes so far this storm season. At the same time last year, we had recorded 780,000,” he said.

“Our crews are in for an exciting storm season by the way it’s started off.”

The lightning interrupted a concert and forced the cancellation of another on Sunday night. Canadian pop singer Tate McRae’s gig at Riverstage was paused as the audience took shelter from the storm at the nearby QUT campus, while British pop stars Take That were forced to cancel their gig at Sirromet Winery in Mount Cotton.

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