Incredible footage of a tornado forming in Australia has been captured as wild storms hit southeast Queensland.
The weather phenomenon occurred near the Darling Downs community of Kaimkillenbun, population 248, at around 3:40 p.m. on Thursday.
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 towards the ground. .
Southern Queensland was hit by 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 much of New South Wales, including Sydney, which caused trees to fall onto pedestrians and homes, roofs to fly off and more than 120,000 properties to lose power.
High temperatures in Brisbane on Friday are forecast to be a scorching 37C as a heatwave hits southern Queensland, prompting fresh warnings to stay cool.
Bureau meteorologist Angus Hines said Birdsville, in the state’s west, had the highest temperature on record on Wednesday of 46.3C.
“The temperature was 36.4C in Brisbane, 36.7C on the Gold Coast and 35.9C on the Sunshine Coast and around 30 degrees in the coastal areas, it was very sticky and humid,” he said. Mr. Hines.
The storm cell formed near the town of Kaimkillenbun on Thursday afternoon (pictured)
The images showed the clouds forming a funnel that extended towards the ground.
Hines said the Southeast could expect milder temperatures over the weekend.
‘Until Friday afternoon or early Saturday morning there will be a change in wind across southern parts of the state, with the colder southerly flow entering the southeast and then pushing into parts of the central interior.
“This will result in milder temperatures for the weekend, it won’t be a big cool change, but it will shoot temperatures below 30 degrees.
“Maybe we’ll go back to average this season.”
Matej Lipar, research associate at Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said while tornadoes are not common in Australia, they do occur.
“Tornadoes are violent, rotating columns of air that fall to the ground from storms, with winds that often exceed 200 kilometers per hour,” he explained.
“They can cause massive destruction: uprooting trees, smashing buildings and throwing debris great distances.
‘Tornadoes have been recorded on all continents except Antarctica. They occur most frequently in the Great Plains region of the United States and in the northeastern India-Bangladesh region.
Southeast Queensland was hit by multiple storm cells on Thursday, including this one that brought hail, heavy rain and damaging winds.
In recent decades, documented cases of tornadoes in Australia include a 2011 tornado near Melbourne, a 2013 tornado that crossed northeast Victoria and traveled to the New South Wales border.
That tornado produced winds of between 250 and 300 kilometers per hour and damaged Murray River townships.
In 2016, a severe storm produced at least seven tornadoes in central and eastern South Australia.
And in 2021, a tornado ripped through western New South Wales and the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed it caused damage to houses, power lines and trees around the Clear Creek area, northeast of Bathurst.