Wild weather unleashes thunderstorms across south-east Australia, triggering flash flooding

Wet weather batters parts of Queensland, NSW and Tasmania amid warnings of heavy falls on Friday Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Wild weather more typical of summer than the last days of autumn has caused chaos in south-eastern Australia, unleashing a string of severe thunderstorms. Heavy rainfall accompanied by 500,000 lightning strikes across Queensland and New South Wales triggered widespread flash flooding, road closures and travel disruptions. Tasmania was also set to cop the brunt of the unseasonal weather that hit hard on Thursday. “It’s very, very late in the season before winter to be getting these sorts of weather systems coming through,” said the Bureau of Meteorology’s Jonathan How. “It’s very much the sort of weather pattern that you see during the spring or summer from the point of view that it is very humid. “You don’t typically see these big storm outbreaks across the east coast in the last five or six days of autumn.” Ilana Cherny, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said the wet weather battering eastern Australia was being driven by a broad low pressure trough that had drawn in “a lot of tropical moisture across the re