According to the BOM
Climate Education website
Severe thunderstorms
Hot, humid, unsettled weather conditions. An approaching cold
front or trough. The ideal conditions for severe thunderstorms, and
their progeny of flash flooding, large hail, destructive wind
gusts, and even tornadoes. Most Australians can vividly recall at
least one major thunder-, wind- or hailstorm in their area, and
occasionally these storms are of such note to be talked about for
many years afterwards. In Melbourne, the February 1972 flash flood
was such a storm; in Brisbane, the tornado of November 1973, in
Sydney, the 1990 and 1999 hailstorms. Residents of Yaamba in
northern Queensland would not quickly forget the 480mm that
cascaded down in six hours in April 1996.
Storm damage
According to Emergency Management Australia, severe
thunderstorms cause more damage in Australia each year than any
other natural hazard, and the damage bill in individual cases has
gone into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Hail causes the
greatest proportion of the damage, accounting for nearly half the
total losses from severe storms. The 1990 storm in Sydney inflicted
about $380 million damage - a record figure for a hailstorm, until
dramatically surpassed by the storm of 14 April 1999. In that
storm, insurance losses exceeded $1.5 billion - with total losses
considerably higher.
Australia does not experience the extreme temperature contrasts
over short distances which characterise some weather patterns in
the United States of America, and partly for this reason severe
storms are not generally as frequent or severe as in, say, the
Midwest of that country. To take the example of tornadoes: the
United States generally has at least 10 tornadoes per year ranked
as F4 or F5 on the Fujita scale (see Table below), and therefore
capable of producing great destruction, whereas only one storm in
Australia's history has (officially) been ranked this high. While
it is probable that many more such tornadoes go unnoticed in
Australia because of our much lower population density, this is
unlikely to explain the difference entirely.
When are severe storms most likely?
All areas of Australia experience severe thunderstorms, but
their preferred time of occurrence varies. In most of northern
Australia, the "transition seasons" (autumn and spring) are the
most likely time, in eastern Australia it is the late spring/summer
period. In southwestern Australia, severe thunderstorms are most
common in winter in areas nearer the coast (but in spring-early
summer further inland). As a general rule, severe storms are most
common in New South Wales, Queensland and parts of Western
Australia, and least common in Tasmania.
Though individual severe storms, which last for mere minutes or
hours, have little climatic significance in themselves, they do in
a sense define the extremes of that area's climate. Many people
would probably be surprised to learn that Melbourne's climate
history includes a tornado (Brighton, 1918) powerful enough to rank
with some of the stronger storms over the plains of Kansas and
Nebraska in the American midwest!
Several examples of each of the main severe thunderstorm types -
tornadoes, hailstorms, flash floods - along with instances of the
gale-force winds over the southern States that accompany strong
midlatitude low pressure systems, may be found under the
appropriate heading. The link to dust-storms leads to a separate
description of these sometimes dramatic events.
The Fujita scale of tornado intensity
Rating
|
Wind speed km/h
|
Expected damage
|
F0
|
64-116
|
Damage to chimneys and windows. Branches torn off trees.
|
F1
|
117-180
|
Roof peels off. Caravans bowled over. Cars pushed off roads.
|
F2
|
181-253
|
Roofs torn off houses; large trees snapped or uprooted
|
F3
|
254-332
|
Roofs, some walls torn from well constructed houses; most trees
in forest uprooted.
|
F4
|
333-418
|
Well-constructed buildings levelled. Cars thrown, large missiles
generated.
|
F5 over
|
418
|
Strong frame houses lifted, carried and disintegrated;
Steel-reinforced buildings severely damaged.
|