Severe thunderstorms producing heavy rain, large hail and lightning are impacting parts of Queensland and NSW on Thursday.
Winter is a quiet time for thunderstorm activity in eastern Australia because there is less atmospheric instability and surface heating for the storms to develop compared to spring and summer.
However, there are rare cases where all of the ingredients come together to cause severe winter thunderstorms over parts of eastern Australia, and this unusual situation is happening this week.
A pool of cold upper-level air interacting with ample atmospheric moisture is causing thunderstorms to develop over a broad area of southeast Queensland and northeast NSW on Thursday.
Image: 500hPa temperature at 10am AEST on Thursday, showing a large pool of cold upper-level air over eastern Australia.
This system already triggered a few thunderstorms on Wednesday afternoon, which caused large amounts of small hail in parts of both states, including Grafton and the Glass House Mountains region.
Image: Hail in Grafton, NSW on Wednesday, August 13, 2025. Source: @em.norton / Instagram
Thursday’s thunderstorm activity has been more widespread than Wednesday, with areas experiencing large hail and plentiful accumulations of smaller hail stones. While wintertime thunderstorms are less likely to become severe than their summertime counterparts, it’s not unusual for winter storms to cause lots of small hail that can accumulate on the ground.
Video: DTN’s Stormtracker dashboard showing satellite, radar and the DTN Total Lightning Network overlaid on Thursday, August 14, 2025.
Severe thunderstorm warnings have been issued by the Bureau of Meteorology this afternoon for parts of southeast Queensland. Even thunderstorms outside of these warnings can be dangerous due to their lightning, rain and small hail. Short periods of heavy rain can cause driving conditions to become hazardous and large accumulations of small hail can cause structural damage and affect crops.
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Image: Don’t get caught out by an incoming storm with alerting across your work site. Source: iStock / Jurkos
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