Brett Dutschke, 16 Sep 2014, 4:45 AM UTC
Thunderstorm threat stretching 1000km from VIC to QLD
Potentially severe thunderstorms are lining up for more than 1200 kilometres, from eastern Victoria, along the ranges and coast of New South Wales and into southeast Queensland.
Early this afternoon the storms were focussed over Victoria's East Gippsland and on NSW southern and central ranges. Later in the afternoon storms began to develop further north along the ranges and into southeast Queensland.
The storm threat will diminish in the late afternoon and early evening over most of the region as a low pressure system and associated trough move off the coast, taking most of the storms with them. The threat should last until about mid-evening on the north coast of NSW and on the southeast coast of Queensland before the trough takes storms offshore.
Until then, any thunderstorm has potential to produce damaging winds and large hail but the threat of flash flooding is mainly in Gippsland and southern NSW. North from about Sydney the storms are too fast moving to bring a lot of rain, so the threat of flash flooding is less.
In the Sydney area, the biggest storms have been in the southwest where there was brief heavy rain and marble-sized hail. Campbelltown picked up about 10mm of rain, most of which fell in 10 under minutes. Golf ball-sized hail was reported in the Picton area. The offending storms have since died.
Keep up to date with storm warnings at http://www.weatherzone.com.au/warnings.jsp
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