Severe Storms: It's Australia's Season

Severe storm approaches Brisbane, Australia
Sunday. The storm caused widespread damage

In the Mid-South yesterday, there were a handful of tornado reports ahead of a strong Arctic front sweeping across the nation.

No injuries were reported, and damage was pretty light, which is a good thing.

We do get tornadoes this time of year, but obviously, winter isn't the peak season for these dangerous storms. Spring and summer is the peak season.

If you want to see severe thunderstorms, supercells and tornadoes, go to the Southern Hemisphere, where it is now summer.

Mostly because of geography, theres' not as many big storms in the Southern Hemisphere as in NorthAmerica.

However, Australia is pretty famous for some intense storms and supercells and tornadoes.

Below are videos, the first one of an epic supercell that swept across part of Australia a week ago, and then more videos of a particularly intense, damaging, severe storm Sunday in Queensland. The damage was particularly bad in and around Brisbane.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. said Queensland Environmental Minister Steve Miles was trapped for a time in  his house by fallen trees and power lines.

If you're craving some severe weather videos, here's one of a recent supercell in Australia. What's striking, pardon the pun, about this video is the incredible amount of lightning in the storm:



Here's a news video of this past week's storm in Queensland, Australia. Pretty nasty!!!




Here's what it looked like in one back yard in Ipswich, Australia

Brisbane, Australia Blasted By Incredible Supercell Storm. Wild Photos, Videos

James Marriott in his roofless Brisbane, Australia
apartment after an epic storm moved through. Photo via AP.  

While most of us here in the United States enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast, some with no electricity in the Northeast from a snowstorm, it was a normal workday in Brisbane, Australia.

That is until the worst thunderstorm to hit the city in decades blasted through.

Widespread areas of Brisbane and surrounding towns suffered through 85 mph winds, lots of lemon-sized hail, torrential, flooding rains and a zillion lightning strikes.

Planes at an airport were flipped over and sent skittering across fields. Residents huddled in hallways as roofs flew off and hail smashed windows, allowing more hail, torrential rains and hurricane force winds to blast into their homes.

The videos you can watch at the bottom of this post are outrageous.

This plane was flung across a field during
Brisbane's huge storm Thursday.  

Given the huge number of dangerous hailstones pelted down, the shattering glass in hundreds or even thousands of buildings, the falling debris, the roofs flying off buildings, some of them high rises; the flooding, it's amazing that only 29 people had minor injuries in the city of a little more than 2 million people.

Australian Broadcasting Corp says the city suffered at least $150 million in damage. Power was cut to more than 100,000 customers. Countless cars were totaled by the giant hailstones.

The storms hit just as the afternoon commute was getting under way. That meant there were a lot of cars on the road. Meaning a lot of cars that would get trashed by hail.

The hail and flooding and power failures also pretty much put the kabosh on public transit, so many people had trouble getting home from work to see how badly their houses were trashed.

The videos below are beyond incredible. Watch:

First video shows the incredible intensity of the storm:




Amazing that nobody got hurt in this downtown Brisbane neighborhood, considering what you see happening. Yikes!




Watch the storm invade this guy's apartment in a very scary fashion: The wildest part begins about 1 minute into the video: