Hail, heavy rain and a tornado as storms lash multiple states

Thunderstorms have lashed multiple states on Thursday afternoon, bringing hail and heavy rain, with the Bureau of Meteorology confirming a tornado occurred in central-west New South Wales.

Three people were injured in the freak storm near Clear Creek, north of Bathurst, which damaged houses, power lines and trees.

It comes after a small tornado hit nearby Orange recently and the Bureau of Meteorology’s Gabrielle Woodhouse said it was unusual to see repeated events.

“In terms of tornadoes being felt in places, it’s reasonably rare, it’s not completely out of the question that we see these sorts of phenomena but it is rare that we do see tornadoes fairly frequently,” she said.

[Click through to share your videos and photos of the wild weather]

Severe storm warnings remain current for areas across the east coast, so please keep up to date by checking in with ABC Emergency online, the Bureau of Meteorology’s warnings or listening in to your local ABC radio station.

The BOM in Queensland warned of a “very dangerous storm” near Kingaroy, in the south Burnett region.

The BOM said there had been reports of hail up to 6 centimetres in the southern Darling Downs and 2 centimetres in Chapel Hill, in Brisbane’s west, while social media users in Canberra shared images and video of hail falling in Canberra.

The storms stopped play in the day-night women’s cricket Test between Australia and India on the Gold Coast.

“With the system moving marginally east we do have the risk of severe storms in Brisbane, Sydney, and Canberra,” according to Jackson Browne, senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology.

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“However, the higher-end storms will be along the inland slopes and plains of southern Queensland and northern New South Wales.”

Damaging winds, large hail and heavy rainfall potentially leading to flash flooding are all on the cards for the eastern seaboard. 

Further inland, in north-east New South Wales and southern Queensland, the risks include possibly destructive winds, giant hail and heavy rainfall leading to flash flooding. 

It follows a big day yesterday

“Yesterday, we saw the first big firing up of all that moisture,” according to Jackson Browne, senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology. 

“In association with that weather system, we saw explosive supercell development along parts of the border of Queensland and New South Wales, as well as some very dramatic rainfall associated with slow-moving thunderstorms in suburbs of Adelaide.” 

The Adelaide suburb of Crafers West recorded 82.2mm of rain in the 24 hours to 9:00am this morning. At Mount Cowley, on the Victorian south coast, there was an impressive 123.2mm. 

Giant hail has been reported in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. 

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When is it going to end?

After a big storm day today, the threat is expected to move north-east tomorrow. 

According to Mr Browne, the threat will be more squarely on south-east Queensland and up to the Capricorn region tomorrow. 

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By Saturday, the system is expected to move off into the Tasman. Residual showers are expected on the east coast, but they are not expected to be severe. 

“By Sunday, the northern half of New South Wales should be weather-free and the same for most of Queensland,” Mr Browne said. 

It is not all about the east

Meanwhile, in the Top End, the build-up has well and truly arrived.

Moisture levels are similar to those usually experienced in December, which could be coming as a bit of a shock to the system to Territorians who were dealing with elevated fire danger earlier this month. 

Further west, another front is set to impact south-west Western Australia early tomorrow. But Mr Browne says it is weakening and is not expected to deliver a huge amount of rainfall. 

“That system will move surreptitiously across the [Great Australian] Bight and provide an increase in weather come Sunday for South Australia and Victoria and Tasmania,” he said.

 The next weather event is always just over the horizon.