Severe Thunderstorm over Brisbane Airport Drops Brief Tornado! (credit: Higgins Storm Chasing)

DISCUSSION: As a weak, low pressure system quickly moved through parts of central to eastern Australia, there were a number of strong to severe thunderstorms which impacted several largely populated cities across far eastern portions of Queensland, Australia.  To be more specific, cities including (but not limited to) Brisbane were impacted by strong to severe thunderstorms.  Some of these storms moved through deep-layer atmospheric environments characterized by stronger vertical wind shear.  The presence of this stronger vertical wind shear allowed a few of these storms to develop significant rotation and one of them (as shown in the image above) developed a substantial wall cloud with a rotating lower of the cloud deck.  Though this was not a tornado at the time at which the video footage was captured, this storm did briefly drop a tornado earlier in its history.

To learn more about other high-impact weather events occurring across Australia and the South Pacific, be sure to click here!

©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz