Trees came crashing down, two-centimetre hailstones fell, strong winds swept through and more than 25,000 flashes of lightning across south-east Queensland on Monday, but the weather bureau says the worst is yet to come.
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An estimated 3500 Energex customers lost power on Monday night across several regions within the south-east, and some were still waiting to be reconnected on Tuesday morning.
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Michael Knepp said the Sunshine Coast region was the worst affected.
"We had reports of trees down on Steve Irwin Way and over the railway line," he said.
"The Sunshine Coast area was the most affected. We had a few severe storms that went through ... the northern one went to the Sunshine Coast and the southern one went to Brisbane.
"The winds did knock down some trees in the gusty conditions and we also had reports of two-centimetre hailstones.
"There was not enough moisture to get enough rainfall for flash flooding, which is typical for this time of year, the two main things were the large hail and damaging winds."
The highest rainfall totals on Monday were 47 millimetres in Lower Springbrook, inland from Coolangatta, and 36 millimetres fell in Samford Valley, north-west of Brisbane.
An Energex spokesman said the energy provider recorded more than 25,000 instances of lightning across the south-east from midday to midnight on Monday. About 2200 of these struck the ground.
"There were 3500 power outages last night at the height of the storms and there was still some damage this morning with about 320 customers on the Sunshine Coast still without power," he said.
"Our crews have been working all night to rectify these outages because of that strong little storm cell in the area and we had fresh crews take over this morning.
"We did have a sizeable outage at Gympie, one of the outages on the Sunshine Coast was caused by a direct lightning strike and another was caused by a falling tree branch."
Looking ahead, Mr Knepp said there was the potential for storms to hit the south-east again on Tuesday, expected to be similar to those experienced on Monday.
"There will be more moisture in the atmosphere, more instability and a south-easterly change will move along the coast early on Wednesday evening, which usually sets up severe storms" he said.
"We could see damaging winds, large hailstones and the potential for stronger storms than that if that south-easterly change comes through."
Brisbane was forecast to reach a top of 28 degrees on Tuesday. There was the chance of a thunderstorm in the late afternoon and evening, most likely in the western suburbs.
The city was expected to hit 30 degrees on Wednesday. There was a high chance of showers before a thunderstorm in the afternoon and evening, with up to 35 millimetres of rain predicted.
