Brisbane (Marburg) radar from 00.40UTC (10.40am) to 06.40UTC (4.40pm). The aniimation slows from 03.00 to 03.50UTC (1 to 1.50pm) when heavy hail was being dumped on Warwick and the southern Gold Coast. Note the first Gold Coast storm moving SE while all other storm elements are moving ENE. Coolangatta appears to have had three separate storm cells between 03.50 and 05.10UTC (1.50pm and 3.10pm) BoM

The trough that brought severe storms to central and SE NSW yesterday moved through the northeast of the state this morning and through SE QLD this afternoon bringing further severe weather. Storms began to develop along a line from about Coffs Harbour to Inverell late this morning. This line moved NE, while at the same time thunderstorms propagated NW along the troughline, extending to Toowoomba around 2pm and to south of Emerald around 5pm.

While heavy rain has been a feature of SE QLD storms over the past three days, today's event was more notable for hail, strong downdraft winds and a likely tornado. Over 600 homes on the Gold Coast and in NE NSW along with countless motor vehicles were damaged by hail, with the Insurance Council of Australia anticipating 6,000 claims totalling over $16m.

The final damage bill for storms in NSW during October was put at $46m, with the State Government offering financial assistance to 380 growers worst affected. The storms ripped through banana plantations, native flower and vegetable crops in the Sydney basin, on the north coast between Port Macquarie and Yamba and in areas such as Goulburn and Bowral, in the Southern Highlands.

Strong wind gusts caught by automatic weather stations included 100km/h at Warwick, 96 at Gatton and 95 at Rockhampton. The heaviest short-duration rainfall measurements were 5.2mm in 2 minutes at Rockhampton, 8.6mm in 4 minutes at Warwick and 2mm in 1 minute at Cape Byron.

In NE NSW, Banora Point, just south of Tweed Heads, received most damage, with the SES called to 56 jobs. Giant hail to 9cm diameter was reported near Grafton. Damage was also reported from golfball to tennis ball sized hail in the Kyogle district and at Tyndale, 30km NE of Grafton. Vegetable fruit and native flower crops were flattened in the Bellingen and Nambucca shires with the damage to up to 100 horticultural producers estimated to be as much as $10m.

On the QLD Gold Coast, the storms arrived early this afternoon, blowing down trees and powerlines, unroofing houses and shattering windows and car windscreens with golfball sized hail. 35,000 homes were blacked out with 3,000 still without power the next morning. SES personnel were brought in from as far away as Toowoomba and Gympie to help tarpauline roofs and make emergency repairs. Around 500 SES workers were kept busy until Wednesday. Some cars were damaged to the point of being insurance write-offs. A Qantas jet was damanged and forced to land shortly after taking off into the hailstorm. Flooding resulted in Gold Coast 12 residents being moved to emergency accommodation. The rain, wind and hail also temporarily halted the Gold Coast Indy Car Race only 14 laps into the race as cars slid around on marble sized hail.

Brisbane's Courier Mail claimed that hail punched as many as 200 holes in individual house and shop roofs in Currumbin, Tugun, Elanora and Palm Beach in the southern Gold Coast where the most concentrated damage seems to have occurred. At the Currumbin State School, 16 buildings were badly damaged by hail. Over 100 animals and birds, including a dozen kangaroos and wallabies and 14 pelicans, were battered to death by hail up to cricket ball size at the Curumbin Wildlife Sanctuary just north of Coolangatta. They included three endangered Dorcopsis wallabies from Papua New Guinea. The sanctuary had the only six Dorcopsis wallabies in captivity in Australia, as part of a breeding program to try to increase their numbers.

At Stanthorpe, two houses were destroyed and fruit crops and trees ripped out by what has been initially estimated as an F2 tornado by the Brisbane severe weather section of the Bureau of Meteorology. One of the houses destroyed, a Queenslander-style, was moved off its foundations and dumped metres away with the occupants inside unhurt. An SES spokesman said the damage trail was 500m wide, and that a 10ha pine plantation had been flattened. Hail with the storm destroyed fruit and vegetable crops, hail netting and some sheds from Stanthorpe north to Warwick with some producers losing half their crops and a damage bill around $1m expected. A section of hail netting blown from a property in Stanthorpe was claimed to have been identified in Liston, 20km to the east and over the border in NSW.

Three other suspected tornados were reported in SE QLD. One was reported at Mt Nebo, 25km WNW of Brisbane CBD; a second at Biggendon, 70km W of Maryborough, where a damage track 500m wide and 1km long was reported; and a third about 12km south of Kilkivan, 45km WNW of Gympie, where a disjointed damage track 100m wide and several kilometres in length was reported. In the Kilkivan suspected tornado, trees were described as having been "screwed off" and some building damage was also reported.

Golfball sized hail was also reported from northern Brisbane suburbs including Woody Point, Sandgate, Redcliffe and Bracken Ridge, while hail of the same size accompanied by strong winds damaged 90 homes in the Samford to Mount Nebo area. Tree, powerline and some roof damage was reported in the area around Esk, Laidley and Ipswich. Farther north and northwest of Brisbane, tree and roof damage was reported from Eidsvold and Blackbutt, golfball sized hail from Baralaba, Nanango and Burnett Heads, and a wind gust of 94km/h at Rockhampton. West of Brisbane, Warwick reported 5cm hail, flash flooding and a wind gust of 100km/h.

News sources: ABC, AAP, News.com, Courier Mail,