A powerful storm in southeast Queensland brought in fist-size hail, heavy rain, and 133,000 lightning strikes in just 2 hours.
The lightning was triggered by a large thunderstorm over Kimberly and was the result of Tropical Cyclone Dahlia sitting right off the coast of Australia. The electrical storm was caught on camera by Geoff Green, where you can see flashes of lightning in rapid succession within a large cumulonimbus cloud.
Lightning storms of this nature are not extraordinarily rare in Kimberly, but it is less common to have footage of the event. They form from the rapid upward flow of warm and less dense air. Once that warm air rises, it expands, cools, and condenses forming typically a cumulonimbus cloud. During this process, water and ice rub together forming an electrical charge.
Eventually, with rising and falling air, mixed with collisions of small ice and water particles, the entire cloud becomes electrically charged and form lightning. Low pressure in Kimberley triggered warm air to rise, creating the circulation needed for a lightning storm.
The storm left 13,000 customers without power and damage from 3" hail (in the Australian summer) and flooding. The Sunshine Coast received over 4 inches of rain in less than an hour. It even caused the Australia Zoo in Beerwah to close, with no people or animals injured. Thankfully, the hail did not last more than half an hour and there are no current reports of injuries.
Tropical Cyclone Dahlia is the first tropical cyclone of the 2017-2018 season in the Indian Ocean. Cyclones are the same weather phenomenon as hurricanes or typhoons, which differ in name based on origin. A hurricane is reserved for the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific (nearby North America). A typhoon is reserved for the same weather phenomenon in the Northwest Pacific and it is named a cyclone in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Similar to North America, a tropical cyclone is similar to a tropical storm but in the South Pacific or the Indian Ocean.
