Stormy skies delivered heavy rain, gusty winds and hail to parts of the southeast on Saturday. 

320,000 lightning strikes were detected within 800km of Broken Hill throughout Saturday – 35,000 of which reached the ground. This included Adelaide and Melbourne, which both saw storms rolling through during the day. The image below shows the 800km radius from Broken Hill, with many storms flashing over remaining parts of the country as well. 

Image showing total lightning detected by the Weatherzone lightning detecting system in the hour to 6:15pm AEDT. An 800km radius of Broken Hill is also overlaid, within which over 300 thousands lightning strikes were detected on Saturday. 

Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued yesterday for both South Australia and Victoria. Damaging wind gusts of 104 km/h were recorded in Renmark, and 82 km/h in Port Augusta and Yunta, in South Australia.  

Heavy rainfall affected parts of central and southeastern Melbourne, with 24 hour rainfall totals to 9am this morning in the 25-35mm range for locations including Gardiners Creek, Springvale, Keysborough and Cardina. With this rainfall, flash flooding was also reported around parts of Melbourne, as well as hail up to 2cm in diameter. Larger hail, 3-4cm in diameter, was also reported in Victoria, near Nagambie. 

This stormy weather was brought by a broad low pressure trough which slowly crossed the region over Saturday. This system has now pushed further east as is bringing storms to inland parts of New South Wales today, before contracting into Queensland and northern New South Wales on Monday. Another round of wild weather is on the cards later this week as another trough deepens over eastern Australia from Wednesday onwards.