Thousands lose power as Christmas Eve storm wreaks havoc

A Christmas Eve storm left thousands of homes without power as it delivered about 50,000 lightning strikes across south-east Queensland.

One of the strikes on Wednesday afternoon took out a large tree at Lutwyche, in Brisbane’s north.

A video taken immediately after the strike shows a bare patch of bark in the middle of the tree’s trunk where it was hit. The tree slowly keels over before snapping at the point of impact.

“It had a massive crack through it and eventually fell,” resident Alysa Darby said.

The storm caused several power outages in Brisbane, with 3000 households without power in its immediate aftermath.

About an hour later, power had been restored to roughly a third – 1204 households in the Indooroopilly and Chapel Hill area – but 1845 homes remained without power in Clayfield.

A later outage affected 258 homes in Toowong.

Suburbs on the Sunshine Coast were also experiencing outages, with 1076 households initially affected, although many of these have had power restored.

“Where conditions have eased and it’s safe to head out, Energex crews will do fault-finding patrols to assess the damage and repairs required,” a spokesperson said.

“Estimated restoration times will be updated in Outage Finder based on damage assessments.

“We have crews on standby 24/7 every day of the year for emergency response and they’ll be working to get the Christmas lights back on as soon as they safely can.”

Minor outages were also observed in the affected suburbs, with some residents reporting their power went out for a minute or so before coming back on.

At 4.30pm, the Bureau of Meteorology had warnings in place for heavy rainfall in the Greater Brisbane Area, including surrounding areas such as the Sunshine Coast, Southern Downs, Darling Downs, and parts of Central Queensland. There was a possibility of hail in the Southern Downs.

Three storm cells made their way through the south-east. Toowong experienced 44mm of rain in about a half hour, with less in Chapel Hill and Kenmore. The CBD also experienced 15mm to 20mm.

A second cell dropped approximately 30mm to 40mm just south of Ipswich, while the Sunshine Coast experienced 57mm in about 30 minutes.

Storms were expected to lessen overnight before gearing back up by about 10am on Christmas Day.

The heatwave warning has now been cancelled, and temperatures are expected to ease throughout the remainder of the week.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.