Freak tornado hits Queensland: Dramatic video surfaces of wild storm – as severe weather strikes Australia
Incredible footage has captured a tornado forming in Australia as wild storms battered southeast Queensland.
The weather phenomenon occurred near the Darling Downs community of Kaimkillenbun – population 248 – about 3.40pm on Thursday.
The footage shows dark clouds in the sky near the small town, about two hours west of Brisbane, as the storm cell formed before a telltale funnel appeared at the base of the cloud formation and snaked its way towards the ground.
Southern Queensland was hit with hail and heavy rain on Thursday afternoon following hours of severe weather warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology.
It follows a week of severe storms and damaging winds across large parts of NSW, including Sydney, which caused trees to fall on pedestrians and houses, ripped off roofs, and left more than 120,000 properties without electricity.
Brisbane is forecast to hit 37C on Friday as a heatwave sweeps Queensland’s south, sparking fresh warnings to keep cool.
Bureau Meteorologist Angus Hines said Birdsville in the state’s west had the highest recorded temperature on Wednesday of 46.3C.
‘It was 36.4C in Brisbane, 36.7C at the Gold Coast and 35.9C on the Sunshine Coast and around the mid thirties for the coastal locations, it was very sticky and humid,’ Mr Hines said.
The storm cell formed near the town of Kaimkillenbun on Thursday afternoon (pictured)
Footage showed the clouds forming a funnel which stretched towards the ground
Mr Hines said southern Queensland could expect milder temperatures into the weekend.
‘Into Friday evening or early Saturday morning there will be a change in the wind across southern parts of the state, with the cooler southerly flow kick in across the southeastern and then pushing into parts of the central the interior.
‘This will result in milder temperatures for the weekend, not a big cool change, but will absolutely shoot temperatures down those mid to upper 30s.
‘We’ll return perhaps to what is average for this season.’
Matej Lipar Adjunct Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University said while tornados are not common in Australia, they do happen.
‘Tornadoes are violent, spinning columns of air that drop from thunderstorms to the ground, bringing wind speeds often exceeding 200 kilometres an hour,’ he explained.
‘They can cause massive destruction – uprooting trees, tearing apart buildings and throwing debris over large distances.
‘Tornadoes have been reported on every continent except Antarctica. They most commonly occur in the Great Plains region of the United States, and in the north-east region of India–Bangladesh.’
In recent decades, documented instances of tornados in Australia include a 2011 tornado near Melbourne, a 2013 twister that crossed northeast Victoria and travelled up to the New South Wales border.
That tornado brought winds between 250km–300km an hour and damaged Murray River townships.
In 2016, a severe storm produced at least seven tornadoes in central and eastern parts of South Australia.
And in 2021 a tornado swept through western NSW with the Bureau of Meteorology confirming it caused damage to houses, powerlines and trees around the Clear Creek area, north-east of Bathurst.
